


CLARKSON!

by ellymelly



Category: The Grand Tour (TV) RPF, Top Gear (UK) RPF
Genre: Boys Being Boys, Multi, bros, honestly, that night, we love them anyway
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-15
Updated: 2016-12-05
Packaged: 2018-03-17 22:12:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 29
Words: 51,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3545624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellymelly/pseuds/ellymelly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Andy has a new adventure in store for the trio after the dust has settled.<br/>Is it the end? Is it the beginning? Have they even noticed as they carry on being the daft morons that we love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**CLARKSON!**

**Chapter 1: Beer Nutters**

  


A slightly damp presenter wandered through the morning fog toward an inevitable disaster.

“Good God, Clarkson – what is that?” May pulled up, hands on hips and tilted his head to get a better look. The nine-foot infant turned to the camera with a beaming smile that never faltered.

“A brilliant idea!”

“No it's not. It's a rubbish idea.”

“Don't be so pessimistic,” Clarkson insisted. “It's people like you that give British passport holders a dreary reputation.”

“Oh tosh...” May tried to brush some of the water off his awful jumper. The average guide dog had better dress sense. It was a sad fact that the harder May tried to be fashionable the worse the fashion became. It was better if he didn't try. “Half the world thinks we're insensitive buffoons on your account.”

“Gentlemen, seriously...” Hammond interrupted. He was about to insist that it was too early to bicker when he caught sight of Clarkson's little project. “What has Clarkson got now?”

“Not you too...”

May sighed. “It is the great and powerful Range Rover – JC model... He's adding a few personal touches.”

“Good lord.” Hammond wondered if he'd be in breach of his contract if he turned tail and fled the country. “You were meant to be watching him.”

“I am watching him,” replied May. “It was this or let him go shopping for presents. Which would you rather?”

“If I'm honest – I think I'd rather we just duct taped him to the back of your Ute. We could tow it the rest of the way in peace. An offering of sorts. To the God of Common Sense.”

“Is there any chance that's covered in our insurance?” May pondered, half-seriously.

“Probably. Wait...” Hammond spun around a few times, scanning the empty carpark. “Where's my car?”

“I was coming to that...” May started carefully.

“Coming to what... Where could it possibly go?”

“I sold it!” chirped Clarkson proudly.

May shrugged and pointed to the brand new set of ridiculously oversized tires. “That's your car right there.”

“My – what – but – how – did...” Hammond was stammering, reaching out his arms toward one of the tires that was frankly nearly as tall as him. “Six hours! It's only been six hours! I had a drink I went to bed I woke up and this is what I find? What am I meant to do without a car?”

“Don't worry I have thought of everything,” Clarkson stood up, dusting the grease off his hands. He led the others around to the other side of his inappropriately large vehicle to reveal a push-bike. “As you can see.”

Richard Hammond's face went pale. “The last time I went near one of those, I landed plums-first on a tram line!”

“Exactly. You'll be fine. There's no trams where we're going.”

“At some point this morning, I am going to beat you to death with the rims of your new tires,” Hammond muttered. “First, I'm going for coffee. I'll deal with all of _this_ later.”

James May stepped out of the way to let the Hamster sod off toward the catering truck and its cranky barrister that scowled so loudly at his patrons that you'd swear he'd been given the job as punishment for some terrible crime.

“Did you really sell Hammond's Jeep or is it parked 'round the back under a hay bale?”

“James,” Jeremy turned and leaned against his immaculate Range Rover. “These things are expensive.”

“Blimey...” May couldn't hide his grin. “You realise you're going to make the day unbearable for the rest of us with an angry, four-foot presenter on the loose?”

Clarkson was still grinning.

It was worth it – at least for the footage that they managed to capture during the excruciating day but by the end of it even Jeremy was willing to sell Hammond the tires back for a reasonable price.

“Oh god!” Jeremy sighed, slumping into a bar stool. “Please just give me five minutes of precious serenity and then you can continue chirping on about your useless, mostly broken Jeep. I promise.”

Hammond had the distinct imprint of goggles across his face having been forced to spend the entire day on the bike. Even his walk was funny – a sort of amusing hobble that May and Clarkson quietly mocked every time Hammond went out of earshot.

“Besides,” Jeremy continued, dragging his first glass of wine off the table, “you weren't the one that nearly had their head run over by a 4x4!”

“It was _miles_ away...” Hammond replied. That wasn't quite true and they all knew it. There were a few moments there when every lawyer in the BBC held their breath, praying that the walking wad of obnoxious cash didn't get his head ripped off by May's reasonably priced off-roader. It wasn't May's fault. The steering was rubbish bordering on insane and Clarkson had fallen out of nowhere, spraying himself across the asphalt like road kill.

Jeremy decided to drink more wine.

“Accident or not,” he muttered into his glass, “if your wheels come that close to my private bits again I'll shave your head.”

May lofted his eyebrows. That was an interesting threat.

“What – take the Spaniel to get clipped? You saw his hair last season. The shorter it is the deeper the ratings dive.”

“Maybe you should dye it?” Richard suggested innocently. May and Clarkson turned and eyed him silently. “What? At least I have hair...” Jeremy self-consciously ran his hand over the back of his head.

Two glasses of red became six and everyone relaxed. Jeremy had forgiven May and Hammond was ushering snacks from the bar toward their table.

“There are reasons why people call you a 'hamster'.” Jeremy held his wine up. James filled it while Richard frowned, holding a bowl of nuts.

“I always thought it was to do with my – well – lack of vertical stats.”

“There are other things,” Jeremy assured him. Nibbling bowl after bowl of nuts was probably one of them. “Anyone know what time it is? I'm starving...”

James tried to read the damaged watch strapped to his wrist but he cantered over, nearly tipping off the chair.

“Bloody hell...” Richard grabbed him by he back of his rank sweater, righting him. “Who let you drink wine?”

“G'off!” James tried to nudge Hammond away – missed – and ended up awkwardly sprawled in his chair pondering if he had the stability to reach for his glass. Near-killing his mate was not an easy day and Jeremy's lack of ranting was starting to bother him. That usually meant it was serious.

“May – you're drunk.”

“Thank you Dr Clarkson,” he slurred back.

“You have to off-road in a Ute tomorrow.”

“He has to off-road on a bike,” Jeremy pointed at Hammond, who was still wolfing down nuts.

“I don't want to talk about the bike,” he insisted firmly. “We're not going to _ever_ talk about the bike.”

Jeremy considered his co-presenters for a few minutes and then decided firmly, “No, no, no... I'm starving. Hammond, go get May's Ute, we'll roll him onto the back and head off in search of sweet – sweet steak. Not all of us share enough DNA with rodents to live off beer nuts.”

“Mate, if you can lift him...”

They both tilted their heads at May who was intently staring at the six blurry copies of his glass of red – wondering which one was real or indeed, if there was a glass at all.

“You know that test you do,” Richard said half an hour later, with May draped between him and Clarkson. It was beyond awkward with Clarkson towering on side and Richard taking most of the weight. They were well practised, limping along. “When the cops pull you over and you have to walk down one of the road lines. I don't reckon he'd make it.”

Clarkson laughed hoarsely, taking a drag from his cigarette in his free hand. “I think staying on the road is part of the point.”

“Shut up you pillocks and stop talking rubbish about me. What was that?”

“What was – aw May – no...” Hammond tried to simultaneously inch away from May and not drop him the result dragged the trio suddenly to the left so that they all looked drunk.

“Cock!” May realised it was cow shit.

Jeremy started laughing, shaking like a sky scraper on wheels in an earthquake. “Helicopter!” He pointed to a bright beacon of hope ahead. “There is life! There is salvation.”

“Cocking, cocking, cocking...”

“Stop bloody moving about or we'll drop you on your face!” Hammond tried desperately to keep May still.

“No more farms. No more outdoors. Next challenge we're doing in a pub.”

Clarkson and Hammond looked at each other in the darkness and shrugged. They had no real objection to that though it might take a bit of talking around to get the producers to agree. They'd road-tested a supermarket before...

“Propellers... Down!” Clarkson bent in two which made him roughly Hammond's height, diving to miss the thwapping blades attacking the freezing air.

The same mist that had irritated them this morning was thickening over the landscape, obliterating the few lights of the town behind and threatening to choke Jeremy with the smoke of his own fag. He tossed it aside as they started the gruelling task of getting the muttering May into the belly of the helicopter. They suffered through his detailed description of rotary physics while they belted him in place and rejoiced when he nodded off and started snoring. The noise of the helicopter almost drowned out May.

 


	2. Clarkson!

**Chapter 2: Clarkson!**

James May woke with the world's worst hangover and a vague impression that something had gone terribly wrong.

His first clue was the missing wake up call that was meant to drag his sorry, aging arse out of bed, the second was the eerie silence permeating every outdated feature in his room. The hotel had walls of paper and stone-dust but this morning there wasn't so much as a squeak out of the fifty-strong production team. Either there'd been an apocalypse during the night – or there was about to be one.

“Good morning...” James announced his presence to his co-presenter and resident rodent. Hammond was sitting in one of the ancient chairs as close to the fire as he dared in a flannelette shirt. He was wearing dark sunglasses. Before breakfast.

“Seriously mate?” Hammond couldn't think of a less appropriate entrance.

“Oh come on, I don't look that bad,” May insisted. “Well nothing hair and make-up won't fix in a jiffy.”

Hammond was staring in a stunned silence at May. He let those sunglasses wander down his nose. “May – how bad would you say that hangover is that you're nursing?”

He rubbed his temple. It hurt. “Bad.”

“It's going to get a lot worse once your memory sulks back, I promise.”

“Oh bollocks, what's he done now?” May realised something tragic had transpired. “Wait, let me guess. He's burned my Ute to the ground with your bike in the back. No... Burned _his_ Range Rover beyond recognition?”

“Try his career,” Hammond muttered. He wasn't joking.

May frowned, held his forehead, closed his eyes from a moment then growled, “Oh COCK!” when he finally suffered a few flashbacks from the night before. “Where is the great ape?”

“Out tinkering with his Range Rover JC. In the next shire.”

“Right...” May put his water down and stumbled back to his room to get properly dressed.

A few hours and a bumpy helicopter ride later, James trudged over the gravel toward the ridiculously pimped car rather ruined by an enormous dent that he'd been responsible for yesterday. “Clarkson you moron – what have you gone and done now?!”

Clarkson whacked the tires with the palm of his hand. “Have to let the air down to stop them catching on the rims. The noise is atrocious. I can't survive another day with it or I'll murder my own inner-ear.” May didn't reply to him, instead waiting for him to actually answer the question. It took nearly ten minutes for him to get around to it. “To be honest there are a few missing bits from last night.”

“What about the _bit_ where you dressed down the infant producer and I hauled you away by the neck of your jacket?”

“That bit's sticking.”

“Thought it might. Well you didn't kill him did you? No. He hasn't run screaming to the press – you've got as much hair as you started with-”

“I reported it,” Clarkson admitted, standing up and leaning on his car. He slipped off his gloves and put them on the bonnet with a shrug.

“Why've you gone and done that?”

“I thought I might try and do the decent thing for once and apologise.”

“How'd that go down with our beloved guardian angels at the BBC?”

“Rubbish,” he rolled his eyes. “I'd have been better off running stark naked through the production offices draped only in a poster of Saddam Hussein with half his moustache shaved off and a smiley face drawn on my left testicle.”

James tried to frown, scowl and laugh simultaneously. It resulted in him choking on the bloody country air. “God above. Is it really that bad?”

Jeremy petted his Range Rover affectionately. He was quite fond of it and for the first time in quite a while he'd really been looking forward to another day of challenges and watching Hammond fall his bike into the mud. “We're not going to be needing any of these,” he admitted. “All Hammond's prayers have come true.”

“He did threaten to eat a producer if we made him go through with it. I guess it was good of you to halt production for him.”

Despite himself, Jeremy laughed and offered James a ciggy.

“Oh no...” Jeremy mocked. “You're head's fallen off.”

“I'm just hung over,” James insisted “Apparently you two idiots let me drink red last night. You know how that ends!”

“With great hilarity usually,” Jeremy shrugged. “Honestly James, by the time Richard I realised you were drunk it was too late – you were trying to count how many copies of your glass you could see – whilst we were walking to the helicopter. Had to throw you to the ground to stop your head being chopped off by one of the blades. Actually in retrospect that would have been a better outcome.”

James looked woefully embarrassed, his cheeks darkening. Normally he'd let his hair fall forward as cover but it was shorter now. Whose rubbish idea had that been? “Yeah well – drunk or not – I still tried to keep you off that producer.” James paused, looking more serious. “Why'd you do it?” he almost whispered. “I know he's an annoying prick but he's hardly worth all this trouble now – is he?”

Jeremy was uncomfortable. In the last few months he'd been pulling away from his friends as much as his family. Richard and James had noticed, of course. When the camera's were rolling he was his usual boisterous self but the minute they packed up, Jeremy was ducking off to be on his own. He spent his nights in the hotel room sleeping (or snoring, if you ask his neighbours) and his limited time off working. Yesterday had been the exception. He'd allowed himself to relax with the others like they used to – knock down a few drinks together after a difficult day's filming.

“I couldn't give a toss about the steak,” he replied carefully, suddenly very interested in the chipped detailing of the car. Idly, he ran his finger along one of the curved scratches in the Duco. It ended in a massive knot of wire and paint. “How much do you know?”

“Hammond and I aren't daft,” James replied, leaning against the car with Jeremy. There was so much unspoken between the three of them. If they ever stopped fussing about cars for long enough they'd realise that they'd been mates for most of their adult lives. What started as a bit of a prank on the BBC had become their entire identity.

“He told you about that night,” Jeremy shrugged. He almost looked relieved.

“Mate, you were on your back in the hallway looking like you'd died. Poor Hammond isn't the world's strongest man but he is a determined bugger to get a creature your size into its room.”

Jeremy wished he'd been too drunk to remember that... His body couldn't give a fuck about him any more and neither did his family, it appeared. Actually the only living organisms sticking around were the two blokes he'd spent several decades leaving behind on dodgy roads in reasonably priced cars.

**TWO MONTHS AGO, RIO**

They were wrapping up the shoot. The light was about to transition from stunning to shit as the sun rode the edge of the horizon and the sand that had been scorching all day was starting to feel damp and cold on their feet as they trudged toward the water for the final take.

Richard knew something was up. A few hours ago, Clarkson ducked out of shot and vanished for half an hour. It wasn't like him to take calls during takes – in fact Hammond couldn't actually remember the great ape ever answering his phone. Hell it rang all the time. Usually he roared at the production crew before realising it was his then slammed it against the dashboard a few times before continuing on. He was a professional. Richard didn't say anything – no one did – but he certainly caught James' eye and the two of them nodded in acknowledgement that something was up.

Things got a lot worse as soon as they found a bar. Jeremy insisted on the dodgiest dive known to mankind. He was very specific. He wanted to go somewhere where there was absolutely no chance that they'd be recognised or hassled but served alcohol that wouldn't kill them. He'd done well. Hammond was distinctly more afraid of being robbed and murdered than asked for an autograph or poisoned by the local vodka.

Hammond tilted his glass.

He couldn't work out why it had a slightly pink tinge to it though. It was probably infused with the blood of innocents. May was beside him, seemingly wondering the same thing as he held his shot glass to the light. He seemed to decide that it wasn't important and downed the lot before immediately re-pouring.

“Slow down Slow.” Hammond slid the bottle away from James. “I suspect we're going to have to look after the overgrown child tonight and no matter how much Red Bull chasers I have, there's no way I'm going to be able to cart both of you out of here.”

May seemed to think that Hammond was overreacting and stole the bottle back. “Richard, what are you blithering on about?”

“He's up buying us drinks. He's here to vanish in a puddle of Clarkson. This is not good.”

“His mother passed away,” James replied, simply enough. Hammond caught his gaze with a questioning look. “That was his phone call. I ah -” he continued, when Richard prompted, “-heard one of the producers talking about it while you were getting your hair fixed.”

“Bloody hell,” Hammond decided that the entire bottle of alcohol was going to be a good start. He didn't even have the energy to berate May about the slight on his hair. “Why didn't he – Clarkson!” Hammond was interrupted by the world's scariest waitress. A six-foot-seven, middle-aged TV star. “What have you got there, man?”

What he had was a tray of death and destruction which was taking no prisoners.

By some miracle they all made it to the hotel. James wasn't in such a good way. He'd tried the black stuff. The black stuff instantly sent him to the floor where he spent a good hour trying to clamber back onto the chair. It was probably unrefined petroleum.

“May!” Hammond had one hand on the hallway wall to keep himself upright. “The other door, man! The other – that one!” He was trying half heartedly to direct him to the correct room. Finally a door clicked open and May tumbled into the darkness. Eh. That was close enough. Where the blood hell was Clarkson?

“Clarkson!” Hammond shouted – or more correctly _slurred_. He was stumbling down along the hallway. Something crashed onto the floor behind him. He was pretty sure it was a vase of flowers but there was no way he could go back to check, not without falling to his death.

A few minutes later he narrowed his eyes at an obstacle ahead. It was moaning. No. It was complaining.

“Clarkson...?”

“Fuck off, Hamster.”

Yeah, that was Clarkson.

“Can't fuck off,” Hammond protested. “You're in the 'fuck-off' path you oversized boulder.” Even though Hammond had pointed that fact out, he still tripped and fell straight on top of Clarkson who complained wildly.

“HAMMOND YOU IDIOT!” he yelled back, trying to push the other man off. “My broken hips don't need you on them! Get off!”

That was more difficult that it sounded. Hammond ended up next to him, sitting against the wall. “Mate – your face...”

“Shut up...” Clarkson muttered, but with less venom than before. Clarkson's eyes were bloodshot but not with injury or alcohol. He'd been crying. Here on the floor. In the middle of the hotel at three in the morning. “I can't stay here – can I?”

“No mate, you can't,” Hammond agreed, sizing up the enormity of the task in front of him. He was going to save Jeremy's dignity and he was going to do it while trashed. He said a small prayer to the god of cars and took a deep breath.


	3. Off Camera

**Chapter 3: Off Camera**

It didn't end there. Richard Hammond learned a great deal about his friend that night – most of which survived the haze of inebriation. They sat back to back on the floor with the moonlight making its way through the filthy windows and the dying sounds of revellers blurring into a haze of smoke from Jeremy's cigarettes.

The three of them were closer than Hammond had ever realised. They were entangled no matter what lay ahead and he was at peace with that. This was hard though. Clarkson was invincible. Richard had spent decades watching the universe hurl shit at him and none of it ever stuck. Clarkson could stride out from hell without so much as a singed sock and still offload a cracking slight about the central heating.

This wasn't Clarkson – it was _Jeremy_ and though the pair resembled each other with the same awkward gait and ill-fitted jeans, one was surprisingly human.

“All right you pillocks,” James May stumbled in six hours later with gorges under his eyes and sand in his hair from the day before. “You better untangle yourselves before I call _The Mirror_ and cash in.”

Hammond and Clarkson were still on the floor. At some point they'd passed out and tumbled over. It was a fucking miracle that they were still alive given the lighter and pack of cigarettes beside them along with another half empty bottle of scotch.

“I think my skull is cracked...” Hammond held his head in his hands and rolled over, roughly kicking away the other body beside him.

Clarkson groaned as he got a foot in his stomach and crawled out of the way.

“Jesus...” May thought he was in a bad way but he had nothing on this lot. He decided the best course of action was to close the door before any of the producers saw the mess and help both men off the floor. He put one in the chair and the other on the bed before fetching them water. Hammond threw it straight back up. “We start filming in a few hours.” Yeah – not even May believed those words as they rasped from his alcohol-ruined throat.

“To hell with that,” Jeremy muttered, holding onto the glass as though it were life itself.

“Pull yourselves together chaps,” May insisted, shoving pills down their necks. “We've only got to survive one more day of this and then you can maroon yourself on a dessert island or drive a Dacia Sandero into the sunset.”

“Range Rover!” Jeremy insisted, finally opening his eyes to the glare of sun.

“You and your bloody Range Rovers – they're never going to let you have one.”

“Yeeeeeeees they will,” Jeremy drawled defiantly.

There was a firm knock at their door. James held the centre of the room. “Right,” he pleaded with them, “try to look conscious.”

**PRESENT DAY**

To be perfectly honest, James had expected everyone to carry on filming the last part of their off-roading special as if nothing had happened. They'd get back to the BBC office where Jeremy'd be hauled in for a dressing down – that'd drag on for a few more hours before everything returned to normal. Failing that he might cop a bit of a fine.

There was so much on their plate right now that he felt like he'd been velcro-ed to his calendar. Top Gear was a monster – one that they loved – but God damn it ran their lives, taking them home every night – tying them to the bed and beating the living shit out of their sanity.

That didn't happen.

The car door slamming inches from his nose snapped May from his thoughts. They were all being loaded into separate vehicles for the long drive back to London. Everyone was being oddly silent and he hadn't seen the producer in question since last night. This was all very fucking odd and he didn't like it. There was a different feel in the air. It was bitter.

Clarkson's car pulled out first but the enormous man in the back didn't look up as it turned away, wheels grinding through the gravel. James sat in silence thinking very carefully about what was coming next.

Of the three, Hammond looked the most worried. He remembered the events of the evening including the small detail that perhaps had been lost on the others. It was something the producer had said. It was sticking with him – out of place amid the usual outrage.

_'They'll have you now.'_

_They_. Hammond didn't have to be a genius to work out who the mythical collective were. The BBC had been hunting Clarkson's head for more than a decade. He couldn't help but think the last few months were orchestrated to wear Clarkson down to the point of breaking. It was the running joke on set – a tenner for the first person to kill Clarkson.

Days later, the story hadn't broken.

Hammond was staying in a hotel in the centre of London, cursing another passing shower of rain that seemed content to drown the endless veneer of buildings in freezing water. He needed to get out – find something green and walk in it for a while. He couldn't even go for a drive unless he fancied commandeering a cab. That hadn't gone so well last time he tried.

His phone buzzed. Fishing it out of his pocket, he sighed at the word 'Slow' flashing on the screen. He'd only bothered with one word.

_Pub._

Hammond didn't have to be told which pub. When all the shit fell from the fan onto their heads, there was only one place to skulk off to. He met May there, sinking down three flights of stairs that certainly hadn't passed any health and safety checks. There was only one small table down here, a couch, radio and old fireplace that didn't work any more. Tonight it also sported James May in another astoundingly poor choice of shirt. Some say that James May is dressed by stylists paid to make him look bad – Hammond knew that the creations were carefully selected by the man himself.

“Beer?”

“Yes...” Hammond replied, pulling the offered beverage toward him as he sat down. “Where's the third, slightly old and fat musketeer?”

“That's what I wanted to talk to you about,” May replied. It was odd to see him serious. “He's not coming.”

“What? You organised this without him? That'll spoil his whole day.”

“So will the story that's about to hit print.” May steadied Hammond with a firm gaze. “I have a few friends working at houses of ill-repute. Thought you might like a preview of tonight's news.” James offered Hammond a print out with Clarkson's face all over it. The photo was recent – which was unusual. Normally the paparazzi didn't bother stalking them on any kind of regular basis.

“He's going to lose his bollocks over this...” Hammond set the paper down when his stomach couldn't handle any more. “How much do you think is actually true?”

“That's not the point, is it?” Half of May's beer vanished in one sip. “The mere suggestion will be enough. They are going to drag up every out of context remark, unflattering photo and ill-placed innuendo in thirty years.”

“He's a bloody tough nut though.”

“Is anyone _that_ tough?” May eyed Richard sternly. “He's already had about as much as he can take this year. He needs some time on recharge before he launches a full scale assault on an institution as old as the BBC.”

Hammond was quiet for a while, listening to the pointless flicker of flame in the fireplace fight for life amid the soot-choked interior. “What can we do about it though?”

“Ah,” May shuffled closer to the Hamster. “Now comes my brilliant plan.”

“Thank fuck,” Hammond slammed his beer down happily. “I was starting to get worried.” He frowned suddenly. “You know how everything we've ever done is rubbish? This isn't going to be rubbish. This is going to be brilliant.”

Jeremy Clarkson was starting to go a bit Bridget Jones – providing commentary for himself as he searched for things in his office.

 _'This is Jeremy Clarkson,'_ he muttered, awkwardly bent over a coffee table trying to fish something out from the other side, _'once quite famous, now a bit bald – mostly useless columnist reporting from the cheap end of his office.'_

“Bollocks!” he shouted, as he tumbled over and landed between his couch and table. He felt like a great, beached sea creature twitching on the sand. “That's not gone well...”

Worse.

Infinitely worse was the raucous laughter from outside his window.

It was meant to be a serious meeting to share their plans for Clarkson's redemption but Hammond and May had not quite survived the sight of a mountain tumbling out of shot.

  
  



	4. Nailed it

**Chapter 4: Nailed It**

“Will you lot actually come and do something for helpful for a change and rescue me?” Jeremy blared through the window. Richard held his hand up to his ear, pretending he couldn't hear Jeremy's pleas. “You insufferable rodent!” he continued scowling, prying himself free of the couch. There were chocolate wrappers stuck to his face – which set May off. The oaf nearly trampled his bloody rose garden choking back his unmistakeable smoker's cough.

A few beers later, all three were settled in Jeremy's office. They'd drawn the curtains in total spite of the broad daylight. Vultures with cameras would be on their way. The last thing Jeremy wanted was to be photographed conspiring with his co-stars.

...or photographed dead drunk attempting karaoke. Neither of those things would play out well in the press.

Thankfully were deep in the former – conspiring.

“May – please – I beg you,” Jeremy shifted his chair forward, pleading with a slightly inebriated May, “don't do that...”

May had positioned himself on the stool by the piano. He lifted its antique lid with all the care of a lover. The instrument squealed happily as it was paid attention for the first time in ages. The dust slid from its cover like sand off a dune. To May it was some grand princess that needed rescuing – to Clarkson and Hammond it was a desperately out of tune noise attacking their delicate ears.

“Oh _mate_!” Hammond winced.

“You can't just leave beautiful instruments in a corner collecting dust,” May ranted, setting the cover back at their protests. “They have feelings. Twats like the pair of you sodding knobs don't deserve such things.”

“James – _James!_ I have bigger problems right now than a moody piano.”

James shrugged and picked up his beer instead. It was empty already. Oh well, next one.

“No, he's right,” Hammond agreed, producing tomorrow's paper. “Take a look.” He handed it to Jeremy who scowled at the cheap print.

“Oh god...” Clarkson put his glasses on and for once, actually read the trashy article about him. He was no fan of The Mirror. Six-hundred words of poorly edited drivel. “Well – _some_ of this is rubbish.” He turned the article around and pointed to paragraph two. “Spelling error.”

“Not all of it?” May lofted an eyebrow.

“Irritatingly.” He threw it onto the table. “Well that's it then, I might as well murder myself and invite the press to wipe the blood off the asphalt.”

“Oddly, I always thought it would be the Stig that got you in the end – or Morgan.” Hammond couldn't help a grin. The name still bristled the ape. “Frankly if this all ends and none of us have been wiped off the earth by a caravan then I count that as a pretty good innings.”

“Caravan karma?” James leaned down for the bottle opener. Clarkson threw it at him. “Ow.”

“Coming our way soon.” Clarkson turned to Hammond. “Haven't you already used up a few of your lives?”

“Never. Mentioning. That. Again.” Hammond reminded them all firmly. “Anyway there's _no way_ that they're going to drop you, mate. They'd have to be crazy. We'll lay low for a few days and this will all blow under the rug.”

“Yeah,” May agreed. “You can allow the producer design some hideous challenge for you to complete, film the humiliation and call it all miserably square.”

“That's a bloody great idea!” Hammond nodded.

“I was kidding...” May frowned. “This is the BBC. They don't have a sense of humour.”

“Oh right.”

“Cheer up you two,” Clarkson brought more beers in. “They're not going to axe your perfectly cleans arses.”

James rolled his eyes. “Don't be daft. We're charisma split three ways. Hell if it's just Hammond and me, I'd be there playing recorder badly while Hammond trains Top Gear Dog to do tricks.”

“That's not true,” Hammond insisted, “I upset the Mexicans.”

Clarkson genuinely laughed for the first time in a while, rubbing his thinning hair. He'd given up trying to find a flattering hairstyle sometime in his late teens. Now it just curled against his scalp however it damn well pleased, much like the rest of his personality.

“Have you spoken to _him_... since...?” Hammond asked carefully, his tone suddenly sombre.

“Tried to,” Jeremy replied. “He refused to open the door.”

“In fairness, over the years the producers have done worse to us. I've still got that scar on my upper thigh right-”

“Urgh! Don't show us, mate!” Hammond shifted away from May, as he started to roll up his jeans. “We believe you.”

“Look chaps, I know bad when I see it. Here's what's going to happen. In a few hours this story will break. I'll be suspended from the BBC while the Spanish Inquisition flits around being their usual, useless selves. Then they'll take the moral high ground and I'm going to be out. The question is, what are we all going to do next? This week is going to define our future. We have to have a plan.”

Hammond and May shared a long, meaningful look. “Well,” May started, leaning closer. The effect was spoiled by his slightly drunken balance. “We've had a few hours to think on the matter while we were on our way over and we might have something.”

The edge of Clarkson's lip curled up in a smile. “Does it include the word, 'Andy'?”

“Every good plan starts with that...” May assured him, then promptly dropped his beer.

“May... you daft spaniel.”

*~*~*

It was exactly as his nightmares envisioned it.

The poorly constructed article went to print, slipping into morning paper somewhere between terrorism and politics. Less than an hour later the vultures from competing publications started to appear, flocking around his London apartment hoping for a blurred photo or an official comment.

They didn't get much. Clarkson was on the phone to his lawyer, knee deep in the fine print of his various contracts.

“ _Did you do this specifically to vex me?”_ Clarkson's lawyer growled down the phone. _“First holiday I dare to take in ten years and the minute I step onto a beach the world literally crumbles around me. I am looking up now and I'm not seeing blue sky and tropical birds – I'm seeing the fires of the apocalypse. It's raining ash and blood.”_

Maybe his lawyer should have been in the theatre, Jeremy couldn't help thinking as he suffered through the perfectly fair rant.

“Would you rel-”

“ _Don't tell me to relax!!!”_

Oddly, it was May that the world coaxed out of his den.

Entirely to plan.

He roamed out wearing a ridiculous hat (of his own choosing) and straight into the glare of camera flashes. He was used to fame but this group of reporters had a very different feel to adoring fans. Fans screamed every time you moved – these creature squawked the same questions again and again without drawing breath.

He lifted his hand in an attempt to silence them. Eventually they quietened but only in the way a group of gulls went still with a chip held aloft.

*~*~*

“Saw you on youtube...” Hammond's amused voice came down the phone.

James could hear a cow mooing in the background and the distant bark of Top Gear Dog. “Youtube? My career is on the rise...”

“No seriously mate. The only story in the world right now is us. They love it, you know – you sticking by that old oaf. Somehow we've managed it. It's the BBC against the common man. A struggle of freedom. I hear there's a petition.”

“Don't tell me you signed that thing...”

“Well,” Hammond shifted awkwardly on the other end of the phone. “I felt sorry for the old mug, didn't I?”

“Before or after the other five-hundred-thousand people?” May chocked back one of his awkward laughs.

“Seriously though – that hair mate. You really do look impoverished and un-employed - well done.”

“That's how I always look...”

“Oh – right – uh...”

May's coarse laugh choked down the line. “How are the scripts going?”

Hammond perked up, thumbing through some loose sheets of paper in front of him. “Andy's scary – you know. I think he's actually excited about producing something new. Now we just have to wait for the other networks to start circling. They can smell blood in the water.”


	5. Maaaate

**Chapter 5: Maaaate**

“God in heaven – what is this, man?” May pulled up at a safe distance, tilting his head out of the car window to fully appreciate the spectacle of Clarkson ploughing a field.

Well, that was clearly the intention. What was actually happening was the great motoring journalist Jeremy Clarkson swearing at his stationary tractor as a shower of mud and excrement from nearby cows went all over the otherwise pleasant farmland.

“What?!” Jeremy held his hand to his ear and shouted over the roar of the unhappy engine. “The tractor's buggered itself!” he continued to shout, unnecessarily pointing to the wounded beast.

May had already decided that his original idea of meeting in the local pub would have been safer. He decided that the only form of reliable communication left was the expensive bottle of wine he dangled out the window. As soon as Jeremy saw it, the engine clicked off and he evacuated his current disaster.

“Stop right there...” May held his hand out the window as Jeremy approached.

“What now?” Clarkson whined.

“If you think you're getting in my car looking like that...”

“I bloody am!” Clarkson insisted, reaching for the door. He was greeted by the rather sharp sound of the central locking activating. “May, you plonker.”

“Clarkson, you child. You can go on the roof racks.”

*~*~*

The wine was pretty decent and soon Clarkson had forgiven his supposed mate. They sat on the back of his balcony, swigging the expensive liquor as though both of them still had jobs to fund the indulgence.

“Meant to tell you,” Jeremy was the first to speak, “I've got a great hair dresser down the road.”

“Sod off!” he half laughed into his glass. “I have great hair.”

“You have _lots_ of hair. There's a difference. It's starting to get a distinctly silver sheen to it. Maybe you should try Hammond's hair dresser instead. Not a streak on it.”

“No thank you,” May poured a little more wine. “If nothing else, I don't think I could stand the insufferable quipping from you two.” Then he went quiet realising that there was little chance of that considering they weren't on air any more. It was a very sore spot with Clarkson. His friend went deathly quiet, staring into the bottom of his wine as though the secrets of the universe were somehow written under the deep hue of the alcohol. They weren't, of course. “Sorry.”

“I really buggered things up this time, didn't I?”

May wasn't really sure he wanted to answer that. Truthfully it could have been any of them that lead them to this point. It was bound to happen eventually. Shit happened – especially given how long they'd been on television. Besides it wasn't exactly their fault that they had this misfortune of being on the BBC.

“We should have gone to that other place – the one with the beach and warm water. You always were a cranky bugger when you were cold.”

That was a skilful way of getting out of the real discussion. May had been the one with his hands grabbing tightly at Jeremy's jacket, pulling him back off the producer. It had been May because he was the only one that saw it coming – that knew just how close to the edge Jeremy really was that night. It had been May because of a quirk in the universe leading him to walk into a small production office without knocking to find Jeremy staring at his lighter and pack of cigarettes with such ire that he thought the table might burst into flames beneath them.

“Did you tell Hammond, in the end?” May proceeded carefully.

“He as much as guessed it anyway. He's a rodent, remember? One of the smartest creatures to evolve. You know it actually annoys me.”

“What does?”

“How quiet you two have been.”

May wasn't quite sober and thought he'd heard wrong. “Eh?”

“You've both lost your jobs, haven't you? And all I get is concerned phone calls and free drinks. Why are you laughing?”

“Because, you great buffoon, only you could be annoyed when your mates were being – mates.”

“Bollocks.”

“If you want a bit of a shout – call Morgan round. I'm sure he'd indulge you.”

“Doubtful. He wrote a rather supportive article.”

“God, really? The traitor. He's meant to be your nemesis.”

They kept drinking, finishing May's offering and moving onto the contents of Clarkson's cellar. Of course, ever since May had been on that damn drinking holiday with Oz he'd become one of those insufferable wine snobs that went on and on about every bloody bottle he brought over. The trick with May was to get him drunk fast so that he lost the ability to articulate all those annoying thoughts bouncing about in his skull.

“Is that an – enormous – car driven by – a – tiny human?” May's words slurred and stuttered around his erratic breathing.

There was indeed a Land Rover bouncing over the grass, heading straight for the stranded tractor. A hamster hopped out of it and quickly took a couple of turns around the stricken piece of farm equipment.

“He's not...” Jeremy leaned forward in his deck chair, which gave an annoyed creak.

“He is,” May insisted.

Hammond soon rescued the tractor and drove it off in the direction of the shed.

“He must really think I'm dying if he's saving my tractor.”

James May swatted Jeremy irritably. They'd agreed not to discuss Jeremy's scare.

“Don't touch me!” Jeremy batted James away.

“Don't touch me!” May muttered back – the two of them pushing each other playfully until someone spilled wine over themselves.

*~*~*

“Oh – nice...” the Hamster announced himself, pointing at the two lunatics fighting over what wine to drink next.

“You're about four hours late!” Clarkson pointed out, finally winning the wine off May.

“I fixed your tractor.”

“Doesn't count,” Jeremy insisted. Still, he did have a glass reserved for Hammond and quite generously filled it with 'expensive but crap' wine, as James had so delicately put it. “I can't bring myself to watch the tele – there's nothing but re-runs of our ugly mugs on at the moment. Especially you – Hammond I had no idea you'd made so many bizarre things on your holidays.”

Hammond shrugged. “I get easily bored.”

“Is that why your poor dog is hiding from you?”

Hammond laughed this time and started gulping his wine to catch up to the other two. It was no fun being the sober one – it made you responsible for his ex-co-presenter's shenanigans.

“Here,” Jeremy tossed Hammond what looked like a dog-eared script. On closer inspection it turned out that was exactly what it was. “Have a look at this before your vision blurs.”

“Is this the – blimey...” He'd never been very good at forming complete or coherent sentences but by now the whole nation could speak the obscure dialect of 'Hamsterion'. A few seconds later, he burst out laughing. “Really?” he eyed the other two. “Oh boy, I'm going to need some more life insurance.”

Clarkson looked rather pleased with himself. He and Andy had locked themselves in the back shed with two bottles of whisky, a laptop and whiteboard for near on twenty-four hours. This was the result, and it was brilliant.

“It's rough – I grant you,” James, ever the perfectionist, slurred over his glass. “But it sounds like a riot.”

“And who's going to pay for this?” Hammond asked the sensible question, as he skimmed over some of the rather expensive sounding plots.

“If you guess correctly, Jeremy will let you have one of his bottles of scotch.”

“I will not!” Clarkson tried to hit May again – who easily avoided his great paw.

*~*~*

Inevitably someone found Jeremy's scotch and they retired to the floor. It was safer considering experience told them they'd end up on it anyway. They were sketching gags to slip into Andy's script – some of which they might actually tell him about before blurting them out live on camera.

“You're going to starve,” Clarkson pointed out, looking at Hammond. “A diet of rice crisps and vodka should sustain you. If you're really nice to May, he might let you pack some in his extra fifteen suitcases.”

“ _Two_ extra bags,” James corrected. “And one of them wasn't even mine! It was – well – never you mind.”

Hammond leaned over to whisper at Jeremy, nearly crashing into him with his poor, drunken balance. _“His girlfriend's bag...”_

It was almost taboo to admit that James was indeed dating and had been for a rather long time. James glared at them as the pair dissolved into laughter.

“Give me that,” May rescued the script from them and growled crossly at some of the 'May jokes' they'd already slipped him. “Pillocks!”

“They should have called it, 'Three Old Men Bumble About In The Wilderness Trying Not To Get Eaten'.”

More laughter. “What did Andy call it?” Hammond hunted back for a title page. “There's no – where's the first page?”

Clarkson for some reason, thought this was hilarious. “He doesn't trust us!”

May shrugged. “Fair enough.”


	6. Tenting

**Chapter 6: Tenting**

**9 MONTHS LATER**

**A JUNGLE, FAR FAR AWAY**

“CLARKSON! You enormous buffoon!”

Jeremy had been waiting for that bellow all morning. The rain was hammering down, near suffocating the crew under its sheer weight. A tropical steam rose off the jungle. The foliage, it seemed, was so hot that water evaporated straight off the waxy leaves, rising up to meet the storm only to pour on them again.

There was no mistaking James's angry muttering as he hunted through his luggage...

The nine-foot thief in question reclined warily against the pole holding James's dismal tent up. “I've said it before I'll say it again,” he folded his arms calmly across his chest, “there are no circumstances which could possibly warrant carrying that many socks. They are a complete waste of your precious cargo space.”

James was furious. He hated being wet, he hated all the weird – violent insects that lived in this neck of the world and he _hated_ people ratting around through his gear. “What the bloody hell difference does it make to you how I waste my space?”

“James -” Clarkson argued, as a camera zoomed in on the pair, “- look around you. There'd be more value in packing flippers and a wetsuit. Look at me!” He held his arms out so that James and the viewers could see the thin layer of cotton plastered to his chest. “I'm afraid that my nipples will start shrinking.”

James recoiled at once. “God man... Don't ever say that near me again.” At least it broke James's sour mood. Deciding that his socks would turn up somewhere in appropriate at a later date, he set about putting everything back – folding it with such care and affection that Jeremy started to drift off against the tent. It was amazing how comfortable a splintery beam could be when you'd survived a duvet of tarantulas.

It all happened too quickly.

An ominous creak.

A rush of fabric weighed down by an ocean of monsoon.

May swearing.

The cameraman didn't escape either. He toppled sideways, vanishing in a blur as everyone ended up under the collapsed tent.

“CLARKSON!!!” May was decidedly perturbed. “You USELESS product of natural selection!”

“I think I've been hit by a pole...” A rather sad Jeremy replied, from under the remains of James's tent.

“I'm going to hit you with a pole when I find you. Then I'm going to take it back to London in my carry-on and beat your Porsche into a Beetle.”

“Ah yes...” Richard Hammond wandered over to the muddle of canvas and wood writhing around in the rain. “The early morning sounds of my co-presenters killing each other.” He stepped to the side to allow a cameraman out of the chaos. Balls to him – as soon as the man was back on his feet he started filming the mayhem again. Richard cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “TEA?”

The movement under the collapsed tent paused. Very quietly came two quite reserved answers of 'yes' and 'yes please'.

Hammond left them to it but not without pointing and having a chuckle at their expense. Morons.

*~*~*

A large, awkward creature huddled around a blaze of smoke and ash. Hammond approached cautiously, holding a cup of tea with the brand-less teabag stuck to the side of the mug describing it simply as, 'black tea'. Even the string looked cheap.

“What's that?” he asked warily. The only source of heat in the entire camp was coming from an oil drum set alight – presumably by Jeremy.

Jeremy shifted, rubbing his hands together and holding them back up to the fire. The rain had abated to a light drizzle which stood no chance against his small version of Dante's inferno. “Health and safety guidelines.”

Hammond leaned in. There was, indeed, a large pile of destroyed paperwork aflame. Looked like James's copy was in there too. “Okay – why is it on fire? Did it spontaneously combust as you approached it?”

Jeremy was too damp to bicker with the hobbit. Instead, he beckoned the tea closer, gripping it eagerly – before yelping and passing it from hand to hand, complaining that it was too darn hot. “Any idea why we're here yet? Or where here is for that matter...”

They'd been flown in on private planes and honestly, no one really had the faintest idea which part of the world they'd ended up in. It was their new lords and masters – Netflix – keeping secrets for dramatic effect. The three of them had tried to explain that they were capable of acting but this was a new ship and they'd decided to roll with it. Hammond's only objection was that he didn't know what kind of insect was poised ready to kill him while May had muttered on and on about what shots he'd need. _'You don't understand, man!'_ he'd droned on endlessly. _'There's a very carefully laid out routine to ensure your immune system is properly bolstered so you don't get Zombie Fever or whatever.'_

“Your guess is as good as mine. Somewhere jungle-y...” Jeremy trailed off.

“Oh very good. What startlingly good observational skills you possess.”

“My eyesight's a bit off,” he shrugged, “but I know a leaf when I see it.”

“Aren't you a bit worried that this isn't some god-aweful survivor-reality show and we're about to be left in the middle of nowhere to fend for ourselves? You know what'll happen if it is. We'll all be eaten.”

“Not you,” Jeremy quipped. “You'll starve long before any ritual sacrifices take place.”

The hamster was considering this when May wandered over having fixed his tent that Jeremy destroyed. Everything he owned was swamped with water but he doubted very much it mattered. Besides, he'd just heard the distant rumble of engines in the foliage meaning only one thing – their cars where about to arrive.

“So chaps,” he announced, as he perched on a spider-infested log by the oil drum. At least it was warm here. “I'd like to thank Clarkson for all his invaluable skill and dedication fixing my tent.”

“Hate tenting...” Was his only reply.

Hammond handed May the other cup of tea. He held it like a sensible person – by pulling the sleeves of his famous sweater over his hands first. “If this bloody weather would only improve a bit people might actually want to save the rainforest. If they watch this program all they'll see is misery and three old blokes with bad dress sense.”

“And that – right there – is why we're no longer on the BBC...” Hammond pointed out. “Wait – _wait –_ what is that?” He pointed over to the depths of the jungle around the rim of their camp where vines and enormous, blood-thirsty creatures were waiting just out of sight. The leaves moved ominously – shivering with more than water. The three presenters held their breaths. The camera zoomed in.

While they were all busy staring at the rainforest, something whizzed through the centre of the group, embedding itself in the burning oil drum with a deafening _thump!_ They jumped a moment later, spinning around to see an arrow stuck in the side of the drum with an envelope pinned under its head. It looked like something that a lost tribe would use, though if experience told them anything, this was the arrival of their first challenge.

“Yikes, man!” James's reaction was slightly delayed. He ran his hand through his luxurious hair – making sure that it was all still there. “That's a bit violent, isn't it?”

“Is your hair darker?” Hammond narrowed his eyes at James's mane.

“No.”

Jeremy was first in, trying to pull the arrow out. For a few minutes the whole thing was one enormous accident waiting to happen but through sheer dumb luck, Jeremy succeeded. He handed the arrow to Hammond for safe keeping and set about opening their challenge.

“Well go on then,” James prompted. “Put us out of our misery – I can't bear it.”

Jeremy dramatically cleared his throat and held the message aloft.

“Oh wait...” he destroyed the moment. “Glasses...”

Hammond considered stabbing himself with the arrow but instead brandished it in Jeremy's general direction until he had his glasses on and tried again.

“ _You have been entered into a race,”_ the challenge began. _“Deep in this jungle lies a lost city. Recorded only in tribal stories, it has been forgotten for more than a thousand years. The BBC have spent a small fortune funding an expedition to film its discovery and lay claim to this wondrous event. You will beat them there.”_

“Ay?” James looked both puzzled and excited.

“No, no wait,” Jeremy insisted. “It goes on. _They will have cars – you will not. They have a consulting team of geologists, archaeologists and specialists in ancient history – you have James May.”_

“Oh bloody hell...” Hammond went pale.

“ _You will be given a chest with all you need to begin your quest.”_ As soon as he finished reading Jeremy started laughing and looked questioningly at Andy standing to the side of one of the cameras. “We can't do this...” he pointed out, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “Everything we've ever done is rubbish!”

“He has a point,” Hammond agreed, fiddling with the enormous arrow. “James can't find his socks – how the hell is he going to help us find a lost city?”

Cue a playful scowl from James.

“He is, without a doubt, the most directionally challenged man on the planet,” Jeremy added helpfully. “I watched him lose a vineyard in France. How is that even possible? The entire country is made from grape vines sewn together by peasants.”

“Now hang on a minute,” James stopped them both. “I'm only rubbish at finding things on maps. No – no, stay with me on this. If the city is _lost_ maybe I stand half a chance of finding it.”

“Because you're always lost?”

“Exactly,” he replied to Hammond. “We'll be in the same place.”

“Well there you have it, ladies and gentlemen,” Jeremy turned to the camera. “You might be about to witness three men murdered to death in a monsoon – I mean – find a lost city against their will.”

“If we do find this ancient relic of – wherever this is – it'll be entirely down to the universe having a sense of humour.” Hammond stabbed his arrow into the mud and decided to finish his tea.


	7. Poaching

**Chapter 7: Poaching**

“And that one – and that one, that one too – oh and her with pink hair and -”

“What the damn hell are you doing, Jez?” Hammond frowned at Jeremy, who was sitting on a rock pointing out various members of the crew that were dotted around their temporary camp site. Most of them were complaining about the mud – or the presenters. They'd been buzzed earlier by a helicopter that looked suspiciously like their rivals.

“Counting how many of the original team Andy managed to poach from the BBC.”

Hammond had to admit that was quite an interesting exercise. “And – verdict?”

“Many, many species. I've run out of numbers.” He paused and pointed to another one. “Him too.”

Hammond laughed and perched beside him on the insect infected log of death. Much closer to them was a daft man with a box. “How long do you think it'll be until May works out how to open the box with all our clues in it?”

Jeremy hummed a bit. “Probably the rest of my natural life and half of yours,” he replied. “No seriously, he's got another ten minutes before I crack open the explosives and do it myself.”

If the producers had given Jeremy explosives – Hammond was _out_. “Oh yeah, that's a recipe for success.”

James, in front of his box, stood up and ran his hands through his significantly _less grey_ hair. It bounced a bit in the breeze and Jeremy could not help but wonder where the bloody hell he'd found a hairdresser in this place. It probably didn't matter. Hair and make-up had given up on his ugly mug. They merely wafted powder over his face so he didn't feel left out while Hammond had his teeth whitened – or something.

“So did you?”

“What?”

“You're not even listening...” Hammond shook his head in dismay.

“I am,” Clarkson insisted, with so much enthusiasm that it was obvious he hadn't been. Smoke from the drum buffeted over him. He flapped about, choking on the remains of the Health and Safety documents.

May squeaked and leaped back from his chest as the locks snapped open and the lid shifted with all the drama of an ancient tomb.

“Wa-hay!” James exclaimed, fist-pumping the air a few times in success. “Look at that, man! May might be slow -” he paused and laughed at himself. “No pun intended there, ladies and gentlemen, watching from the comfort of your living rooms.”

“I think he's done it,” Richard pointed, before shouting, “May! Mate – are we good?”

May turned and waved them over enthusiastically.

“He'll be unbearable after this,” Clarkson pointed out. That was true. For ten of the world's longest minutes May was utterly insufferable as he descended into detail about how he'd solved the puzzle box. It was some kind of locking mechanism (which the producers were obviously teaching them) local to the area and Jeremy had no doubt this lesson would serve them well later. Well it'd serve James well. All this torture would be massacred in the editing room.

“May – _enough!_ ” Jeremy lifted his hands in surrender. “What's in the box?”

May frowned. He had no idea. He'd been so thrilled about getting _into_ the box that he hadn't stop to think about what it contained. “Not sure.”

Hammond crouched down seeing as he was the closet to the ground. “Oh dear,” he remarked, eyeing the contents. “It has – things that require _reading_.”

“Give it here!” Jeremy reached instantly for the map held aloft by Richard. James got there first, snatching it away.

“Last time we let you navigate I nearly got killed at a border crossing. Hammond can have this.”

Clarkson wasn't going to fight that logic as long as May had no intention of keeping the map for himself. You didn't need a map to get lost.

“Oh good – bug spray...” Richard muttered, as the pawed his way through the great box of scary things the producers thought they might need. It wasn't until he got to the bottom that he grinned. He withdrew two sets of keys and jingled them about. They weren't car keys but... “They've given us bikes!”

Literally.

Two bikes.

A short time later, Jeremy stood in front of the petrol offering from the producers with his arms crossed firmly over his chest. He wasn't pleased.

“I don't know about you two,” he grumbled, ignoring the fresh drizzle of rain making itself known, “but I've seen plenty of these, 'hunt for the lost relic in the jungle of death' things. Either they're a staged documentary in which case we'll find nothing but a few rocks and blades of grass carefully timed with a rush of dramatic music _or_ this thing is legit and there'll be murderers chasing us through the jungle trying to beat us to the treasure.” Jeremy paused while the cameras focussed meaningfully on the bikes. “If we get shot at on the back of those things – we're dead and as the largest target, I object.”

May shifted. He didn't seem too worried. “I truly doubt our rivals, the BBC, would go so far as to shoot us on sight. They might stop to berate our health and safety procedures...”

“Bore us to death?”

“Slow but effective. They could fill a whole segment on their program – _'we've just come across these three Englishmen riding without high visibility vests. Obviously, in a dangerous environment such as the jungle, it is imperative that you remain visible at all times to both prey and predator alike.'_ They could bring David Attenborough out of storage to narrate it.”

There was a much _much_ longer pause as all three of them looked at the expanse of jungle ahead and their two, sorrowful bikes.

It was May that spoke first.

“Hey chaps – not to state the obvious but – well...”

“We're going to die?” Hammond offered.

“...we're gonna die.” Clarkson agreed.

**9 MONTHS PRIOR**

**A PUB, LONDON**

  
  


“Wait for it – wait...” Andy was holding a tablet up, endlessly refreshing _The Sunday Times_ while they waited for their beers to arrive. It had been intriguing at first but now the three men with the shortest attention spans in the room were starting to fight over the bowl of nuts in the centre of the table instead of watching the screen. To say that Andy was used to it would be more understated than - “There!”

The three men dragged their attention from the nuts to the screen and saw the bolded headline. Andy had officially quit the BBC.

“Mate!” Jeremy clapped him on the back. “You should've said you were unemployed, we'd have shouted you one.”

“You idiots...” Andy chuckled and handed the device to May, who actually wanted to read the article. “You're all unemployed.”

“How did they take it?” Hammond was crunching his way through a paw full of nuts.

“There were a lot of very pale faces when I brandished the letter. Yeah – I printed it out in hard copy. The last time I sent an email it didn't go down too well.”

That earned a chuckle from the group. Officially though – that was going to start a storm of speculation. “They'll know we're up to something now,” Clarkson pointed out.

“Well if you say it any louder, you big idiot, I'm sure the BBC will hear you from here.” Hammond rolled his eyes. It wasn't like it was a secret anyway. The world knew that they would all move on together. They had made a career of living out of each others pockets and no one wanted to jump off the ultra-successful cash cow. It wasn't just that – who were they going to drink with and shout out if not each other?

“You know, this is going to thoroughly ruin our reputations.”

They all turned to look at Jeremy with a mixture of admonishment and amusement. “How do you figure?” Hammond asked.

Was it their imagination, or was Jeremy betraying a faint hint of emotion?

“Well now they know that we loathe each other. We've gone to all this trouble to make sure we can _still_ berate the very soul out of each other.”

They laughed, drank and eventually became sidetracked by a game on the pub TV. At the conclusion of one particularly fine joke from Clarkson, he'd turned to look over his shoulder – expecting a camera to be there to pick up his carefully lofted eyebrow and perfectly timed sigh.

But there weren't any cameras.

Strange. The cameras has always been anther person at their table and he was only now realising that he'd been treating them as a character in their own right – a collective entity with many lenses. The only lenses they encountered now were of the long-lens form, hidden in bushes and balanced out of cars. He wouldn't mind so much except they never captured any of his best gags.

“Time to pack it in?” Andy asked.

Richard started to nod until he noticed something concerning. “Hang on – where'd May go?”

May's chair was suspiciously empty and none of them could remember the last time he'd been there. Counting the empty glasses, he'd been gone nearly an hour.

“Oh shit!” Clarkson slurred, looking around the room. “How's he do that? It is _impossible_ to get lost whilst stationary drinking beer.”

“Found him,” Andy nodded over to the bar, where May had struck up a conversation with a short, bald, wine connoisseur. There was a line of wine glasses and bottles beside them suggesting that May would be crawling home.

Jeremy was twitchy. He fiddled with his glass like a child, constantly in danger of knocking the contents over.

“What's up with you?” Hammond asked quietly.

He shrugged. “The rest of the footage,” he admitted. “Now that Andy's gone – just think of all the inbreds butchering the footage. I almost hope they don't use it.” The only thing worse than losing all their hard work was seeing the BBC make a total hash of it. Better to go down in a blaze of glory than a final, poorly edited bore no doubt slanted to make them look rubbish.

Andy clapped him on the back. “Try not to worry about it. Keep your head up, Jezza. We're steaming ahead into the future. Well, three of us are – James is probably going to be dragged there.”


	8. Bridge of Death

**Chapter 8: Bridge of Death**

“I'm only going to say this one more time, May,” Jeremy was fighting to keep his arms wrapped around James's waist while the other man insistently tried to fend him off, “it is entirely necessary to my survival!”

“I abhor things touching me and I'd rather you fall under the wheels of my bike,” May growled, wriggling.

“Don't be such an _arse_.”

“You are crushing my antique rib cage with your stupid paws every time we go over a ruddy leaf.”

“Drive more carefully!”

“Hitch a lift with the Hamster if you're so concerned about my driving!”

In almost perfect timing, Hammond zipped past them on the more nimble dirt bike, gaining air as he skidded over a half-buried boulder. Jeremy gripped James tightly. He hated bikes. He especially hated this quad bike.

 _''Sup gents?'_ Hammond chirped over the radio, looking infuriatingly like a very small Indian Jones delicately sprinkled with just enough mud to look genuine.

“I think we can both agree,” Jeremy stated, “that the world would be a better place if he had an embarrassing accident right about now.”

James had accepted Jeremy gripping on for dear life and found himself in agreement. “That suave look won't last.”

_'Oy chaps...'_ Hammond's voice crackled over the radio. He was further ahead, hidden by the mess of foliage. They could hear his engine fall into idle as he pulled over to look at something.  _'You better slow down.'_

If James went any slower they'd be in reverse. Suddenly the dense jungle evaporated at the cusp of a sheer drop.

“Holy moly!” Jeremy peered over James's shoulder. “Turn it off. _Turn it off, man!_ ” he insisted. Jeremy awkwardly alighted the bike and strutted over to Hammond who had also abandoned his transport a safe distance from the edge.

Before them lay a bridge. Well  _bridge_ was a generous description for the threads of rope lashed onto the cliffs and left to drape over the valley. Even the gentlest gust of wind made the arrangement sway.

“No.”

“No – what?” Hammond asked Jeremy, as May fussed about parking the quad. Most of their possessions were lashed to the back of it and in true 'The Show That Must Not Be Named' tradition, May made sure bits fell off every now and then.

“No – I don't do jungle bridges of death. Look at it man!” Jeremy stretched out his arms dramatically. “An ant could dismantle that. We're not – _what?_ ”

Hammond was shaking his head. “The lost city is over  _there_ somewhere,” he pointed at the opposing cliff. “We saw the BBC helicopter this morning. Look, I'm sure it's perfectly safe.”

“You walk across it...”

“Fine. I will.”

Hammond immediately regretted his choice as he took a few steps toward the bridge. On closer inspection, the planks of wood groaned and creaked with the  _air_ . He hovered a boot over the first plank.

“Well?” Clarkson barked impatiently. “Verdict?”

Hammond withdrew his foot. “Bridge of Death.”

“Told you,” Clarkson muttered helpfully. As he was gloating, another arrow shot out of the air from nowhere and struck the wooden pylon of the bridge next to his arm. He yelped and jumped away from it. “Bloody arrows!”

“The envelopes were more civilised...” James added, reaching for it. That arrow was never coming out so he tore the message off the blade and held it up. _'You will cross this bridge.'_

“No!” Clarkson repeated. Hammond was backing him up with firmly crossed arms.

_'On the other side lays Sera, a small village built among ancients slabs of granite. Some say these are carved by the original inhabitants of this land.'_

“No...” Clarkson narrowed his eyes.

_'There, you will find a pub.'_ James looked up with a confused frown. “Either the pub is a reward-”

“Or it's a trap...” Hammond insisted.

“What – so we have to pick between death by jungle, abseiling or bridge?” Jeremy turned to the camera and Andy, who was looking rather unsympathetic next to the support team. “You have to cross it too – just pointing that out.”

Andy didn't say anything but five minutes later Jeremy was swearing in his general direction when he saw the helicopter that the crew were going to be flying over the ravine.

James, the closest thing they had to an engineer, had taken up a perch kneeling in front of it – trying in some way to gauge whether or not this thing was going to kill him.

“He thinks he's some kind of 'bridge whisperer'...” Hammond murmured, leaning against Jeremy's shoulder. He and Jeremy were looking out over the last thing they'd ever attempt to do, drinking beer in the hopes that it would lull them into doing something stupid.

“Does he have any idea what he's doing or is it all just for show?”

“Nah – I've seen his degree. He's got it nailed to the-”

“-to the wall above his Jag...” Jeremy remembered, and they both laughed. “It's probably in detailing cars. Bet you five quid if we survive this bridge he'll be out the back of the pub with his little cleaning kit trying to polish that quad.”

“If I had five quid, I'd see you that bet. They don't pay us unless we survive the show. Starting to see the logic in that.”

James stood up and tried to dust the mud off his jeans before strutting over to his pair of useless co-presenters whose only skill, far as he could determine, was drinking all the beer.

“Verdict?”

“Our death awaits, gentlemen.”

“Right,” Jeremy pried himself off the ground. “Hammond – you're first.”

“Ay...?”

Several minutes later, the only thing more vexing than the warm rain was Hammond's whining.

“I don't like this – _I don't like this_...” Hammond was vibrating with fear as he inched his dirt bike onto the first few feet of the bridge. The challenge specifically stated that he had to be riding the bike but it failed to mention how fast. The crew had briefly entertained the notion of duct taping him onto it.

“Hammond – get a move on!” May shouted from the cliff behind. “The longer you toss about the more likely it is to fall down! It's starting to get a bit of a lean on it.”

“Oh, thanks a _bunch_ , mate!”

As it turned out, Hammond's greatest challenge was not the terrifying fall beneath him or the unsteady planks holding the bridge together but rather the ominous silver threads of a jungle-dwelling spider strung up at head height. The proud owner was positioned in the centre, guarding its web with eight keen eyes.

“Just _get on_ with it, Hammond!” Clarkson bellowed over the radio, as he watched his co-presenter fuss about in the middle of the bridge.

“I can't!” Hammond shouted back. “There's a – a _thing_ and it's got many legs!” He was clearly terrified of his new bridge companion. Tentatively, using a bit of wood he'd unwisely managed to break off the bridge, Hammond started to prod at the web to detach it. The spider was enraged by this vandalism, rearing up onto its hind legs. Hammond immediately tried to back away but the web was tangled in his handlebars. As he reversed, the web and the spider followed along with much shouting.

Clarkson and May were on the ground in stitches. The imminent terror of their own crossing was forgotten as they watched Hammond war with the spider while the helicopter hovered off to the side, filming the entire thing in HD. Clarkson was crying, gasping for breath. If the jungle didn't get him – this certainly would.

“Kill it – man!” he shouted helpfully. “Hit it with the – oh my god...”

Hammond was rocking the bridge with his panic. Hopefully the audience would appreciate shaky-cam because between the wind and raucous laughter the footage looked as though it were shot during an earth quake.

Finally, Hammond managed to relocate the spider to the side of the bridge where it stalked off to survey the damage to its web. He continued on, successfully crossing the bridge before parking his bike in the shade of the next swathe of jungle.

“ _All right – you try it!”_ he muttered over the radio at the other two.

“Um, Jeremy...” James started, sounding rather meek for such a tall, drunk man.

Jeremy knew it must be bad. He barely ever used his first name. “May...”

“You know that small, minor character defect that I have?”

“The one that prohibits you going above sixty on a freeway?”

“No. The other one. The heights one...”

Jeremy arched one of his eyebrows. It occurred to him that this might actually be something that James May has nightmares about – being suspended on some half-decayed bridge, strapped to a bike with a nine-foot co-presenter. He wasn't kidding. May had gone whiter than he thought humanly possible.

“Don't wig out on me now, Slow...” Jeremy affectionately tapped May on the shoulder. “I can't drive the bloody bike. Just – close your eyes and think of the pub waiting for you on the other side. Actually, maybe don't close your eyes – but think of the pub.”

“Probably not even a real pub...”

“This is not the time to go all poncy.”

“James _please!_ ” Jeremy howled, twenty minutes later when they were crossing the deadly bridge. “I'm going to stab you in the head with my microphone. I'm serious! We have to – keep it straight for bloody hell _ahhhhhh_!”

Jeremy was absolutely convinced that he was going to be killed. His mind started panicking that this was all some master plan by the BBC to finally kill them off in a supposed blaze of glory. Well, it'd be more of a rush of air and splash at this rate if James couldn't keep his nerves together.

James joined in with the screaming as the helicopter hovering beside them kicked up a fierce gust of wind which set the bridge on a dramatic sway. Instead of holding onto the bike, both men reached out to grab the rope edges of the bridge as though  _that_ would save them. The rest was just screaming as the helicopter backed off and the bridge slowly calmed down. Hammond, who'd usually be giving an amusing commentary to the terror, was gripping the bridge on the other side with some kind of strange idea that he'd be able to hold it up should the worst happen. It was the thought which counted – right?

When they eventually made it to safety they were greeted by a Hamster, bent double in tears, shaking with fits of hilarity. “Your face...” was about all he managed between gasps.

During the ordeal, it had poured and the pair of them looked as though they'd been drowned, rung out and partially dried on clothesline.

“That was-”

“-unspeakable.” May finished Jeremy's sentence. They would have ditched the quad bike except their limbs were glued to it in terror. “I just...”

Jeremy was shaking his head in disbelief.

“You two speechless. Wow, I thought I'd seen everything.” He'd fully recovered from his wildlife encounter. He was about to continue mocking the pair when he crooked his head to the side at the sound of an oncoming motor. “You're joking...” He wasn't sure if he should laugh or cry.

A mud-encrusted Suzuki buzzed along, launching straight onto the other side of the bridge. Then it dawned on them... This was a local, well-travelled bridge and now they looked like total-

“BOLLOCKS!!!” James shouted. “You'll need a _beep_ there, Netflix,” he added,turning to the camera.

“I don't think they use those online,” Jeremy added thoughtfully. “Actually, I'm pretty sure you could say, ' _beep_ the BBC and their _beeping beep_ of a- _”'_

 


	9. Jungle Pub

**Chapter 9: Jungle Pub**

It was a pub. An honest to gods _pub_.

Nestled in a crevice between two towering granite cliffs lay a mere _scattering_ of civilisation. Half a dozen structures built from unusually ambitious slabs of stone, jutted out from the forest. They loomed like old teeth in the jaw of a beast. May leaned against one of them. It was dusk and his aviator sunglasses reflected the last hues of gold poking through the canopy while his brown leather jacket was awkwardly warm for the jungle. He looked good though.

“That's it – there's the shot...” One of the crew gave a thumbs up as they recorded James serenely cast his gaze over a rather stunning view. These parts were scripted. For the past hour they'd been gathering various establishing shots including general 'abuse' toward the quad from Jeremy, Hamster playing up to his inner Indiana by finding an old hat, and James pretending to be entirely disinterested in the whole affair.

“Pub...” Jeremy finally muttered, wandering over to the strange cluster of rocks where James had taken up residence. “They've done Stone Henge all wrong,” he added, pointing up at the weird arrangement. “This is much better.”

“I can't help but think that we're meant to gain something other than establishing shots from this,” James replied. “I've been over and over these gnarly things and there isn't so much as a decorative scratch that could pass as writing. No one's even bothered to scratch their name into the side of them.”

Jeremy was shaking his head fondly at the petrol head that occasionally pretended to be an intellectual. “James – I'm not sure how to break this to you mate but you're no tomb raider.”

James pouted, sliding his sunglasses up into his annoyingly thick hair. It had those trademark waves back in it – probably caused by the alarming humidity. “I dabble!” He insisted.

“You dabbled in recorder too,” Jeremy quickly replied, “and you were rubbish at that.”

“Arse!”

“Fact.”

“So far the only thing you've contributed to this trip is some colourful slander directed at my bike.”

“ _Our_ bike.”

James scoffed. “You disowned it the minute you laid eyes on the poor thing. What was it you said? _'I'd rather go to the History Channel and discuss the endless shades of dust than embark on the back of that piece of miss-shapen, four-wheeled-death-seat.'_ Think about how the quad felt knowing it'd have to lug your ungrateful frame around all day.”

“Yes – yes...”

The banter heated up and Jeremy was quite enjoying himself. The cameras kept rolling in case things escalated to murder.

“Look, we crossed the bridge, found the pub and took a few photos of the stones. Mission achieved – now let's actually _enter the pub_ and drink ourselves into a well earned haze. I even promise not to mention _'terroir'_. Where's the Hamster?”

They both turned around and were dissolved into childish laughter when they saw him half way up one of the rocks that had fallen over and now leaned against the cliff at a steep but not unclimbable angle. On this occasion he actually _did_ resemble a bush-rat that had found a jungle perch.

“He's going to fall and break something,” Jeremy crossed his arms.

“Yeah – his teeth,” James replied, causing Jezza to shake with repressed laughter beside him. “Look at him... Honestly I think he's missed his calling. Male model.”

“Oh god!” Jeremy could live without that image.

He was posing rather enthusiastically. The footage was only half a step away from Hammond laying back on the ruin with a Martini in a pair of swimmers.

“That's it – I'm going inside,” Jeremy announced.

James seemed to think this was a good idea and followed.

The pub was all kinds of strange. Jeremy thought it was rather like one of those dreams – the last fragment of fantasy moments before waking in which your remember only enough of to be disturbed by your subconscious. First of all, it wasn't so much a pub as a cave. The unassuming entrance concealed a yawning chasm in the cliffs that dipped immediately into what felt like the centre of the earth.

James reached out to the wall beside them, grazing his palm on the rough stone while Jeremy quickly glanced back to make sure that the camera crew were following. There was something oddly calming about being followed everywhere by half a dozen cameras.

Flaming torches were strapped to the bare rock. They burned every dozen metres, lighting the way through the cave. The floor below was well warn and littered with things lost by drunken locals stumbling home. There was a layer of decaying leaf litter under foot, washed there with the frequent rains and James couldn't help but realise that this place must flood regularly to explain the smooth water mark at knee height.

“The producers did say, 'pub' right?” James checked. “I mean, I didn't hallucinate that bit or anything and we're about to end up in some sacrificial temple with the BBC executives draped in animal skins?”

“Relax...” Jeremy insisted, although his own voice wasn't as level as it should be.

“I would relax,” James pointed out, “except that – right there, is a shrunken head...” James pointed to a decayed skull pinned to the wall. It was mummified with sunken eye sockets staring blankly in the firelight while old rags and strings of bone-beads tumbled down its forehead.

Jeremy retreated in fright, knocking James into the wall.

“Ow. You great clutz!” James complained.

“Shrunken head!” Jeremy pointed, now pinning James to the wall of the tunnel.

“Yes, I can see that. _Get off!_ ”

After a steep descent, the tunnel ended in a huge pool of blue water that appeared to glow as though it were lit by a moon held under the water. It was milky – ethereal the way it hung beneath grotesque limestone creations. _Bizarre_ was a better word for it. The entire geology should not exist. It was as though the enormous flow of ancient lava had encapsulated the fragile band of limestone where this incredible pool now lay. The locals had set tiny floating candles on leaves and let them drift into the pool. They lit up the water like stars.

Jeremy, who always had something to say, stood silent. It was one of the most remarkable things he'd ever seen.

“Definitely real?” James whispered quietly, feeling the need to check. “I mean, if you're in my dream I realise there are deeper issues afoot but I just thought I'd _check_.”

Jeremy shook his head again. “It's – it's a _pub_...” he whispered.

And it was.

Hours later, the light failed and Hammond was ushered down into the cave by a bored camera crew.

“Oh – my god...” Hammond announced upon arrival. It wasn't so much that he'd found half the crew and his co-presenters laying into a drink that was probably illegal in every corner of the world but that Jeremy was lazing over James, head against the other man's thigh as a pillow. They seemed to be talking deliriously. They weren't drunk – they were _ruined_.

“Hamster!!!” Jeremy lifted his hands up in glee. One of them was clasped around a pottery cup, sloshing with purple liquid.

Hammond wasn't even sure the crew was filming – or that they were capable of operating their equipment. Probably for the best.

“Uh – hi guys...” He approached cautiously.

“Maaaate!” James drawled for longer than usual. He would have moved but Jeremy was too heavy to move. “Pub!”

“No – no I think this is definitely something more sinister than a pub,” Hammond replied, kneeling down beside James. He'd seen these two drunk more times than he could count but by all rights they should have passed out by now. Whatever it was that they were drinking, he needed to find some.

“Where's your moustache?” Jeremy asked, heartbroken that Richard looked – normal.

“My – I don't have a moustache, Jeremy.”

“Sometimes you do!” Jeremy insisted.

“Sometimes...” Hammond replied cautiously. He better catch up soon or risk being scarred for life. “Going to go find myself something to drink.”

“You have to swim for it,” James insisted, pointing in the rough direction of the pool.

He was right, there was a small outcrop of rock in the middle with a huge bowl of alcohol with ceramic cups lined up around it. It seemed as though the general rule was, 'if you're too drunk to swim across the pool – you've had enough'. Hammond would be interested to know who kept bringing James and Jeremy more.

“I'm going to have to go in there – aren't I?” Hammond said to one of the cameras that had been left set up on a tripod. The blank lens stared back, dismayed at what it was being forced to record. Hammond sighed, set his favourite jacket neatly on a rock and made his descent into the ominous cavern pool.

No one remembered a thing.

Andy, who had not partaken in the evening's events, confiscated all the tapes from the cameras. It looked as though he'd also dragged each and every one of them out of the cave and into the open because they awoke in clearing with the cliffs bearing down on them and a few leaves strewn over their bodies. One by one, the crew and presenters sat up, holding their heads to stop the world spinning.

“I'm on fire, man...” May complained, rocking in agony. His skin felt like it had Fire Ants crawling under the surface. Jeremy and Hammond didn't look much better. They were beside him, awkwardly dressed with twisted expressions of pain as they slowly woke.

“I don't think we learned anything from that experience,” Jeremy added.

“I learned not to drink with you two,” Hammond correct him. “Jesus...”

It took the whole day to get everyone back on their feet.


	10. Past and Present

**Chapter 10: Past and Present**

“Am I missing something?” James had been staring intently at him for the last half hour with those oddly vacant eyes of his. You could lose whole continents in them or a small portion of May's spanner collection. Regardless, the staring was starting to bother Hammond. May was a pedantic creature, 'long looks' probably meant that there was something seriously wrong with his hair. “Seriously...”

May didn't reply. Instead he shook his sore head and thought better of mentioning the dark marks running down side of Hammond's neck. They looked oddly like – well... he'd leave _that_ revelation for the rushes where he could properly mock his colleague with the benefit of a live audience.

James flinched when the jungle dripped on him again.

Although canopy was thicker after a few hour's ride, protecting them from the passing rains, they now chose to fall as entirely random surges of freezing water, shattering over the fragile crew – all of whom were nursing hangovers. Every now and then one of them would yelp and run for cover in the safety of the support cars.

He warmed at the purr of an old Range Rover lumbering up beside him. It took to the jungle like a panther, pawing its way behind the team with a few leaves stuck to its windscreen for authenticity. He glanced at the quad bike – then Hammond's ride. All things being equal, he'd rather have the Range Rover.

“Have you seen Clarkson?” The Hamster drifted over, scratching his neck.

“I believe wandered off in search of some rare bird. There is nothing worse than travelling with a twitcher. Remember Africa? Those flamingos cost us a day!”

“I thought he was going to adopt one.”

“Strap it to the roof racks.”

Richard bent his arms awkwardly – presumably impersonating a flamingo on the back of a reasonably priced car.

May choked out a few laughs then _really_ choked _._ The air was unpleasantly thick. Any moisture that fell seeped out of the surrounds and stuck to everything including several hundred years worth of smoke in his lungs. He felt sorry for the cameramen.

“God mate, trying breathing _air_ for a while,” Hammond whacked him on the back in concern. Predictably May batted him away. “Maybe smoke a little less.” He didn't press any further. It was a sore topic after Clarkson's cancer scare which everyone had solemnly agreed never to mention again again.

Jeremy Clarkson wasn't searching for birds.

The great ape had ambled a respectable distance from the cameras and then promptly flopped all nine feet of his aching body onto the forest floor, clutching his head. He hadn't been this ruined since high school.

“Note to self,” he muttered, “don't drink unknown liquids in jungle bars.” It was a pretty good general rule.

Alone, he risked closing his eyes for a moment of respite. The peace lasted but a few frames before a blurred memory of last night rushed in. Jeremy bolted upright in shock. He clasped his hand over his mouth before turning to a rustle in the ferns. It was a lone cameraman, shouldering hefty equipment, stalking Jeremy as though he were a wild creature. Clarkson didn't miss a beat and gave the camera a comically worried look.

“I've had a revelation!” he announced to his invisible audience.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” Hammond asked, as Clarkson stomped back to the muddy track trailed by a camera.

“You've been bitten by an enormous spider,” Jeremy replied, lazily pointing at Hammond's neck.

Hammond bounced around squeaking while May collapsed over the quad bike in tears.

**8 MONTHS PRIOR**

**A PUB IN AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION,**

**ENGLAND (NORTH)**

  
  


“For god's sake, May – just drink the bloody beer.”

Ever since that damn TV show (which really _was_ a thinly-veiled drinking holiday) May spent infuriating amounts of time staring into the depths of beverages. If he started sniffing this one, Clarkson was going to find a different drinking companion.

“Hush Clarkson. I am attempting to determine the particular region of Britain that lovingly produced this beaker of hope for the fledging edge of civilis-”

“It's _Bishop's Finger_.”

“...you ruined it!” May sat back in a huff.

“Drink your beer.”

They drank in silence after that. Clarkson liked this pub. It was a rotten thing, perched in the middle of nowhere with a view over sea which was _always_ spoiled by a veil of drizzle. The only food on offer was fish and chips and that suited him just fine. It was a simple place full of gnarly seamen who couldn't pick him and May from a can of Tuna.

“Did you drive all the way up here on that bike?” Clarkson asked, frowning at the vintage metal leaning heavily on its rest. It had a distinctly, 'May' look about it – well, aside from he fluorescent orange body.

“What of it?” He was always defensive about his bike.

“It's raining.”

“A little.”

Clarkson took another look at his friend. His ridiculously Spaniel hair was sodden and limp. “The water makes it look less-grey.”

“ _Sod off!”_

They both laughed into their beers. The truth was, they'd drive anywhere for each other – as was proved when the most inappropriate vehicle possible pulled up next to the bike, annoying them with a cheerful burst from its horn. _Oliver_ was a love that would last forever. His loyal owner burst into the bar soon after, strutting to his place where a drink was already waiting.

“Where are the chips?”

“Or _'hello'_ as some people say.”

“Mate...” Hammond leaned toward May. “Want a lift back?”

“Shut up the pair of you and stop picking on the bike.”

Jeremy Clarkson was usually the largest creature within a thousand miles but in this neck of the woods the Neanderthal blood ran thick. At some point it had been blended with Viking, laid about smoking heather for too long and turned into the creation that presently sat between Hammond and May. They had deliberately book-ended him, keeping him safe from any potential roving reporters. On balance, the storm of media attention was good for his profile but weathering it had taken a visible toll on an already tired man.

When Jeremy mumbled, _'thanks'_ as they brought him another round of beer, Hammond and May knew it wasn't for the beer.

“You didn't have to do – what you did,” he added later. When he'd found out that they'd all resigned for him, Jeremy had been absolutely floored. Having friends was one thing – knowing how much they truly cared was something he'd been entirely unprepared for. To have _three_ mates give up everything for him was almost too much. It was such a public display that flew in the face of twenty years of manufactured disdain.

“It's an adventure – isn't it?” Hammond offered. “You gotta admit we've been stuck in our comfy rut for a while. There's something refreshing about being forced to prove your worth again – to fight for survival. I think it'll be good for us. Besides, it's that or another stint on _Wipeout!_ for me.”

“ _Please don't do that...”_ May whispered.

“There are more dignified ways to make an exit.” Clarkson shrugged. 'Steak-gate' wouldn't be his first choice of dramatic exit.

“I disagree,” May added. “We've never been very good at dignified. It doesn't suit at all. _Disaster_ is an entirely more appropriate theme. I'm only disappointed that you brought the team down on your own. You didn't give us a chance to participate.”

“What did Sarah say?”

May smirked. “She said it wasn't surprising considering I was fired from my last job for immature behaviour.”

“May – you are the only person I know who was fired for being too smart.”

“ _Smart arse...”_ Hammond clarified helpfully.

“I was _bored_ ,” May insisted.

Hamster was focused on eating chips. Poor thing – he'd been travelling for a few weeks which essentially meant a period of fasting. Even after all these years he still couldn't bring himself to eat anything that wasn't fried within an inch of its life and mostly made of starch. “Eh?” he munched away, looking up.

“I said, 'what do you think?'” Clarkson repeated himself for a third time.

“'bout what?”

“You muppet...”

“Let him eat in peace. He looks like a mouse that's been through a new drug trial.” May chuckled into his beer.

Hammond levelled a glare – then continued with his chips.

Three hours later they'd moved to the scuffed lounges, crammed against the window. The leather was cold where it touched the glass and May was absolutely certain that some of the raindrops running down the glass were on the _inside_.

They'd have to seriously think about bartering a few beaten-up rooms off the hotel upstairs because none of them could make the drive home. There wasn't a sober cell between them as May staggered to his feet, made some bizarre speech about this history of British drinking culture, then toddled off to the bar to order whatever was easiest to pronounce in his current state.

“Well, well, well... Fancy finding your likes up here...” An unassuming creature appeared in front of Hammond and Clarkson with damp, white hair plastered to his forehead. The weather was making a turn into full blown _storm_. Wind whistled against the pub door a it closed while the smoky fire flickered wildly at the disturbed air. This was Andy's local – so he assumed that this meeting was planned.

Jeremy pointed down at a free chair (which actually belonged to May). Andy took it, rubbing his hands together to find some warmth.

“How goeth your lords and masters?” Jeremy asked.

“They're in a bit of a spin about you three,” Andy assured. “All these years of wishing to see the back of you and now that you're gone, the BBC elite are floundering around in a panic. I think it's occurred to them that without you lot it's just _Fifth Gear_.”

Jeremy pulled a face but he couldn't muster any sympathy for them. Detachment. That's what he was practising. “Do they know that you're going to follow suit?”

Andy grinned. “Thought I'd save that revelation for a choice moment. We're still editing the final stock footage. I'm not about to let anyone massacre it.”

“Good.” He was happy about that, at least. “You joining us?”

Andy eyed Richard in the largest armchair possible and James at the bar, considering the pint in front of him. “How are you all getting home?”

Many, _many_ hours later, Jeremy was absolutely certain that Andy had offered to drive everyone home except somehow that wasn't what happened. He was pretty drunk but from what his impaired senses could deduce, he was on the floor in a small, cold hotel room. The combined snoring efforts of the individuals he had the pleasure of sharing this room with sounded like a very ill-tuned organ, bellowing out vile stanzas of thunder. A seagull squawked from the window sill, then picked up a chip and thrashed it against the pane. _Bloody hell._

Why did this keep happening?


	11. Salt

**Chapter 11: Salt**

“Heaven above – what is that?”

The other three looked incredulously at their daft colleague but none with so little patience as Jeremy. There were  _so_ few circumstances in which the orang-utan knew  _more_ than his friends that he felt the need to jump the gun with a very flat, “It's a  _boat_ , James. One of those things that floats on liquid. Very popular from four thousand BC onwards.”

“Well actually,” James spun around in reply, the salty air catching his grey locks, “sea-worthy craft otherwise known as  _boats_ were first made by man's predecessor around eight-hundred thousand years ago _-”_

“Don't you start!” Jeremy cut him off with his paw raised high, looking dejected.

“I'll rephrase my original question,” James amended. “What is this particular boat doing in front of us?”

“My boat,” Andy clarified, pottering down the pier with a bag of bait that was swiftly melting. It left a trail of foul drips on the wooden slats that had been sunk into the mud. At high tide the length of the jetty seemed comical but twice a day the water was ripped away leaving all the boats, grand and cheap, on their sides in the mud. “Thought it might be nice – all of us out on the water.”

“ _In_ the water, more like,” Hammond quietly added.

“Don't be ridiculous – my boat is perfectly sea worthy.” Andy insisted. “Just – bloody get on it already!”

It took some herding but soon they were all perched around various corners of the medium sized boat, pulling out from the safety of the tiny harbour and into the bay. There was a light swell and a cool wind.  _Fresh_  Andy thought. After the night they'd all suffered the best thing for them was some salt in their lungs. Hammond didn't agree. He looked pale, gripping onto the railing and gazing longingly at the land. The fishy-scent coming from the bait bag wasn't helping.

“Please don't touch the rods.” Andy shooed Clarkson off the fishing gear. The boat lurched as Clarkson picked a spot to sit. Eight feet of anything was bound to set the world off balance.

They found themselves a quiet spot and moored, letting the wind spin them around until the sun heated up the back deck. James re-arranged the cushions and laid over one of the seats, aviator shades half-way down his nose. Andy cut the engine and the world calmed. Even the longest-lens cameras would struggle and so finally they relaxed, spending a few minutes in perfect silence.

“It's been a while since it's been just us...” Andy pointed out. “Over the years I think we've been caught up in the monster we created but really, at the heart of it – what have we got?” He wasn't given an answer by any of the three hung-over men soaking up sun on his boat. “ _Talent_. Despite all evidence to the contrary the  _only_ thing that matters is you three. It might be some joke by the great cosmic entity but for whatever reason as long as you stick together we'll be able to make a successful show.”

“We've already agreed to your new project,” Hammond muttered, holding his sore head. He was going to get thrown out of his home if he kept ending up in this state.

“I know but I need something more out of you lot. This show will be your new baby – I need commitment. A promise that you're going to throw yourselves into it – heart and soul. We're returning to the old days when none of your sorry asses were famous – when you were three lunatics fooling about with old cars, trying to make your way. So I'm only going to ask you this once – are you all in?”

Another silence, this time punctuated by the lapping of the freezing water against the fibreglass hull of the boat.

“Fuck it,” Jeremy said in the affirmative. “Let's do it.”

“I'm  _not_  whitening my teeth,” James insisted.

“For  _fuck's_  sake...” Richard groaned.

“You should think about the hair though...” Jeremy teased James, who pouted and looked genuinely worried.

“What's wrong with it?”

“It looks like the London skyline.”

**PRESENT DAY**

**A JUNGLE, FAR FAR AWAY**

“It's  _stuck!_ ”

“How can it be stuck?” Jeremy leaned ominously to one side, making the whole quad whine. Its wheels dug into the mud as another shower of rain cracked into life above.

Hammond pointed helplessly at his bike. At present it was half sunk, its back tire buried in bog. “It just is.”

“I'm sure we have some sort of policy for dealing with this kind of thing,” Jeremy muttered to both May and their camera.

“Yeah – now what was it? I'm a bit hazy on the particulars...”

“Something about – continuing on.”

“Moving forward.”

“Pillocks...” Hammond hissed at his co-presenters. “I didn't leave you on that bridge. Bugger off then, if that's what you're gonna do. I don't want to see your smug asses off camera if you're going to be like this.”

They didn't feel the slightest hint of guilt as they revved the engine of the trusty quad and pulled out of the grit. Clarkson and May made it a good twenty metres before karma struck and all four of their wheels dug into the sinister expanse of sodden terrain and simply  _stopped_. Clarkson lurched forward into May, who shoved him back.

“Oh ruddy fucking hell fire in a Camero...” May swore, as the vehicle seized up under him.

“What have you done to it?” Clarkson shrieked in alarm.

“It's dug in, man!” He replied. “Oh... no...” he added, as he tried to step off for a better look only to watch all of his boot sink into the disgusting mud. “Disgusting!”

“That'll never wash out.” Clarkson added thoughtfully.

They were rewarded by raucous laughter of the radio as Hammond took delight in the universe's sense of justice. Annoyingly the Range Rovers had no trouble, rumbling up for a better look but refusing to share any of their perfectly good tow ropes. This meant only one thing – that Jeremy was forced into manual labour. He complained about it the entire short distance to the nearest tree which he swung an orange rope around and shouted out back to May.

The rope hit May in the face starting off another tirade of abuse. At some point between the tire spinning a shower of mud over May and Clarkson losing his balance into the deepest patch of it, Hammond freed himself. His infuriating bike growled past and traversed up the next bank into the forest with a playful skid.

“See you 'round, chaps!” Hammond waved at them, tipping his hat.

“Clarkson, fetch the ruddy rope before I put it around your neck!” May screeched. He was kneeling in the mud beside the bike.

“James...  _Please_ , the word is 'please' and I know you have manners somewhere under that Spaniel head of yours.”

“Right.” May muttered, using the bike to help himself back to his feet.

“Right – what?” Clarkson blinked in confusion.

“Right – Netflix is going to be the first network to witness the murder of a co-presenter  _live_.”

“James... James... Shit!”

Clarkson started to scramble through the mud as May clawed his way closer with serious intent.

Miles ahead, Hammond had been stopped by the Producers and given a script about survival in the jungle by gathering up local, edible plant life. He was entirely unaware that it was all a horrible joke at his expense and was foolishly throwing himself into it, going all Bear Grylls.

“So – jungle survival...” Hammond gently cupped a bunch of obviously toxic berries and retrieved weeds from the insect infected forest floor – screeching ever time an ant got on his arm. The film style of choice was 'shaky-cam' but only because no one could stop laughing as a harmless carpet snake started chasing Hammond.

It was only when Hammond sat down with his plate of jungle fruit, about to take a bit of a purple fruit when someone dived on him, preventing his death by moments.

That's how the growl of a salvaged quad bike found him – on the ground surrounded by brightly coloured berries.

“...What happened to you – or shan't I ask...?” Richard said carefully.

James and Jeremy lofted their mud-encrusted eyebrows high at their friend splayed over the ground. “That's our line...” Clarkson insisted. He turned to a Producer in a white coat. “Did you try to kill Hammond?” There was no reply from the Producer. “You're  _rubbish_  if you couldn't manage it. Oh – hey...” He pointed.

James tilted his head and all his hair fell to the side in one flop – held together by mud. In front of them, mostly hidden by prickly bush, was a stone statue.

After some delicate work with a machete – and some cross words by May who wrestled if off Clarkson, they crouched in front of the strange looking, chubby humanoid creation etched into stone thousands of years ago. “Well,it's not very helpful,” May pointed out. “I mean, it's nice and all – quite like the detail on the hair but it doesn't really point the way to the lost city or anything.”

“It's a marker,” Jeremy pointed both his hands toward it. “It has to mean something. Look at it!” Jeremy petted the statue on the head. “It'd make a good present for Hammond's bike.”

“Ha ha ha...” Richard glared. “I'm not carting about an ugly, stolen relic.”

James May was perched on the side of Richard's bike as though contemplating stealing it. “We're not actually going to find a lost city,” he pointed out. “The Producers are havin' us on.”

“Then why did the BBC chart a chopper?” Hammond asked. “They're looking for something.”

“Yeah, probably an endangered frog...” Clarkson shrugged.

“No – wait,” May brushed off some of the mud from the back of the statue, frowning at another bank of inscriptions. “It's got writing on it.”

“Can you read it?”

May frowned at Clarkson. “Not exactly but -”

“But... I'm going for lunch.”


	12. Hard Times

**Chapter 12: Hard Times**

There was a three foot stone relic strapped to the back of Hammond's bike and he didn't want to talk about it. The fools on the quad were smug. _Too smug_ he thought, as they skirted ahead of him on the forest track. May had unwisely decided to let Jeremy have a go at driving and was now clinging on for dear life as the great oaf tested out his theories on 'speed' and 'power' to terrifying affect.

“Watch it! Bloody Nora...” May mumbled, ducking as a branch nearly took their heads off. He was mentally writing a detailed list of reasons why Clarkson would never be allowed to drive a vehicle with him in or on it again. “Seriously Jezza – that's a bloody boulder up in f- _Jesus..._ ” They missed it but only just. He was certain at some point he saw a paw swipe at them from a disturbed jungle cat.

If Richard hadn't been so weighed down by the 'present' the others had lashed onto his bike, he mind have laughed. Instead he hissed into his microphone.

“There's currently a betting pool with the crew,” he explained to the future audience, “and even odds are on May murdering Clarkson with a length of rope versus me being used as bait to catch supper. I'm not sure how I feel about people who are standing to make a profit from my demise being in charge of my personal safety.”

“Hammond! Good news!” Clarkson skidded to a stop in front of him – assisted by an enormous buttress root pressed against the front of the quad bike.

“You're crashed and killed your bike?” Hammond asked hopefully, pulling up. He had to use his foot on the muddy ground to stop the bike leaning dangerously.

“No – you half-wit rodent,” Jeremy frowned. “It's another one of those statue things!” Hammond frowned and followed Jeremy's eyeline. There was indeed another stone statue popping out from the ferns. “James – _James_ what are you doing?” he asked, as James hit him in the back of the head with a map, quite by accident.

“Marking them on the map,” he replied, tugging the cap of the pen off with his teeth. “Well we can't strap them all onto Hammond's bike...”

Jeremy had to duck as the ungainly map made another pass at his head. “Watch it, slow...” Somehow he ended up leaning forward over the handlebars, the map stretched over his back while James used him as a table.

“What are you doing?”

“Be still, Jeremy.”

“You never call me 'Jeremy'!”

This happened many times throughout the day. God knows how many stone markers they missed but they found enough to form a distinctive trail on James's map. When the sun started to dip dangerously toward the edge of the mountains, they pulled up in a clearing bound by sandstone flats to start a bonfire and dry out. The forest had left them mud-soaked and miserable. Still, there was something else that had gotten into the presenters and the crew – intrigue. For the first time they really thought that it wasn't all simply TV nonsense. There was a city out there, if only they could find it.

Andy had a sneaking suspicion that they might...

In the hollow between the sandstone cliffs was a pool of water, warmed from spending the day in the sun. It was a strange shade of blue – surreal as though some great water spirit had dropped a sapphire between the rocks and left it to melt. It was shortly spoiled by the enormous splash of Jeremy, leaping off a ledge and catapulting himself into the water. Richard and James turned their heads as they were covered in the over-spray.

“Charming...” James muttered. He was absolutely certain that the Victorian explorers would have behaved with more dignity. He'd have been wrong.

Richard clapped him on the back. “Come on – better go join him before he ruins all the water.”

The camera focused on the mud-creatures, formally the presenters, as they walked into the water, following the smooth, stone boulders until they gave way to an expanse of water. They quickly learned that if you ventured to deep the warm layer of water on top gave way to a freezing sub-level born in the Arctic.

“I-ya-ya-ya-ai!!!” James exclaimed, shrieking as his feet found the cold again. He had to duck as Jeremy splashed him to make him shut up. Richard lazed on his back, floating peacefully as the sun set. They were only given half an hour of perfectly filmed shots before the crew joined them and chaos broke out. Somehow things descended into a rowdy pool party and James quickly escaped, climbing up the rocks until he found a quiet place to sit on the warm stones, looking out over the jungle in front.

He'd changed into light cotton grey pants and his trusty purple-striped sweatshirt. It wasn't a 'Special' if he didn't bring it along. His hair dried and curled back up naturally and _yes_ , Jeremy was correct, he had dyed it a little and found that he quite liked to have his dark curls back again. He tried to imagine what it would have been like out here, hundreds of years ago without the safety of a satellite phone. He was almost able to picture it with the joyous outbursts from the crew below and the encroaching sounds of the jungle as the creatures came out to hunt.

At some point, Richard joined him. He didn't say anything. Instead he simply hunted out another spot on the rocks with his beer and stupid cowboy hat. It was another hour before Clarkson found them. He was still freezing his ass off in his swimmers but too drunk to notice as he lit up and laid down, staring up at the stars that were now dotted overhead. The huge bonfire below made the cliffs glow. The woodfire smoke was comforting and James was able to forget all the pandemonium that brought them to this moment.

Far below by the fire, Andy looked up at the three dots where his presenters hid themselves away from the others. He'd of course made sure that a lone, perfectly silent cameraman had followed them to catch a few serene shots.

“They didn't even break each other's bikes...” One of the junior producers muttered, shaking his head as he flicked through the script. He was clearly knew to these three and their antics.

“Don't worry – they will,” Andy assured him. “For every prompt they miss they'll pay you back with three catastrophes you didn't bet on.”

That didn't seem to calm the producer down. After they'd wandered off muttering, Andy laughed and threw another beer at a cameraman in the water.

The three presenters ended up laying in a circle, heads together looking up at the stars. They still hadn't spoken, content in silence. They always ended up with this feeling when they were in the middle of nowhere on a crazy adventure. It was simply being overwhelmed by the expanse of earth around them – by the sheer staggering beauty of the world they didn't see enough of from their apartments and living rooms. When it seemed as though Top Gear was over it was _this_ that they thought they were in danger of losing.

“You know, there's a rather large insect behind that boulder over there,” Jeremy said at last, referring to Andy's cameraman.

“I was wondering if it brought any wine with it.”

“Well James, unless Oz Clarke is hiding in a cave nearby your chances of that are slim to none.”

“He could be.” James shrugged. “He has a tendency to appear in the strangest places with an expensive bottle of red.”

“I need more friends like that...” Richard lamented.

“You could try trading some of your American friends in for wine buffs...” Jeremy pointed out.

“Or drive something other than a Mustang.”

“James, what did I say about talking shit about my car?”

“That you'd take your revenge out on my Panda?”

“Excellent, you remember. Now shut up and appreciate the stars.”


	13. Vanishing Act

**Chapter 13: Vanishing Act**

The bike vanished. One minute it was roaring through the jungle with a Range Rover bearing down on its tail, cameras keenly trained on every cough of the engine. The next, it was gone. The support vehicles swerved, narrowly missing the gap that had opened up in the forest floor. Andy was first out of the car, landing in the leaf litter, shouting at the radio in his hand as he knelt a the edge of the hole.

“CLARKSON!” He bellowed at the radio. “HAMMOND! MAY!” _Static._ Suddenly everyone was on the radio, calling the presenters over and over. A few of the younger ones gave their phones ago too but they couldn't even tell if they were ringing.

Someone tossed Andy a torch which he held above the hole, piercing the darkness.

**7 MONTHS PRIOR**

**MAY'S HOUSE**

“James – what is _this_?”

James plodded back into the living room and nearly had a fit at the delicate scalextric model in the paw-like grip of Clarkson with his minion, Hammond, almost touching it with his nose.

“Put that down!” he bellowed. The pair startled.

“All right, all right... No need to shout,” Jeremy muttered, setting it safely back on the table. “What is it, though?” he asked again.

“It's a model Spitfire,” he explained, setting down the predictable tray of tea, “which I made with my dad.”

Jeremy and Richard considered the ornament perched on every so slightly bent wheels.

“You pair of uncultured gits didn't watch my programme – did you? Hmm, thought as much. Here – tea?”

Richard held his cup up first. There were only two offerings at the May household, tea or wine. Although, if you got him drunk enough at Christmas he'd ferret out his collection of spirits.

“May – is there any brandy to go with this flavoured water?”

May lofted his eyebrow at Jeremy. “No, you raging alcoholic. Besides, you've given up the booze for three nights a week – remember? This is one of the three. Drink your bloody tea.” He sat down on the couch with them, which was always an amusing sight. In normal circumstances the three-seater couch was roomy but with two of them over six-foot it was a tight squeeze. “I'm still not saying the line,”May added after a while, holding up the script that Jeremy had brought over.

“Come on...” Jeremy implored him. “It'll be hilarious.”

“For you!” he chided. “For me it'll be horrific. I'm not doing it. Make him...” he gestured at Hammond, who pouted. He'd been deliberately sitting there quietly staying out of it.

“It's funnier if it's you and you know it. Go on...”

“Clarkson...” he said after a slight pause. “I can't read maps very well.”

“You idiot, that's the point.”

“Bugger.” May flipped over to the next page and sipped his tea.

“Christ almighty!” Clarkson suddenly bellowed, as an oversized mountain lion leapt onto his lap and dug its claws in, purring. “Why does this thing keep doing that?”

May shrugged. “I don't know – he hates people.”

Richard tried to pet the creature (which incidentally he had actually given May in the first place) but it lifted its lip and hissed at him.

“Cats aren't my thing,” Clarkson insisted, even though he was now giving it a good scratch behind the ears.

“Free to good home?” May offered, which was immediately met with another loud hiss from his pet. “Hammond only gave it to me in the first place because it tried to eat Top Gear Dog.”

Hammond shrugged. “It's true. Any idea where this adventure of our is set? I still can't tell which continent we're on and when I try and check the flights it simply says, 'To Be Advised'. I feel like we're being kidnapped by our own crew.”

“Andy is selling us to drug lords for organs,” Jeremy offered helpfully.

“Well you two aren't worth much as scrap.”

Both older men hit Hammond at the same time.

**PRESENT DAY**

**A JUNGLE, FAR FAR AWAY**

  
  


Clarkson's memory of the event was quite different.

He'd been mid-rant at May's driving – absolutely certain that the spaniel had them lost – when the ground fell away. His stomach hit the floor and everyone screamed as if they were on one of those cheap theme park rides. He was vaguely aware of Hammond swearing behind them as his bike followed suit but then all the world around them went black.

Roots and clots of dirt hit them as they fell, scratching against the bike and their faces. Jeremy lifted his arms and crossed them over his face, groaning as the bike with him and May tilted mid fall. _Jesus_ , he thought, _they were going to hit the ground on their side._

The ground was coming sooner or later. It took a long time. In retrospect, their sense of time was probably warped by the sheer panicked rate of their hearts rather than the size of the drop but gods when the ground came it certainly knocked them ten for one.

Clarkson felt _something_ , not pain but a sudden rush of pressure and then he was out.

The screaming was replaced by silence.

Dust and leaves swirled around the pair of bikes strewn over the sink hole. The ground was soft with dirt but even so, the bikes had suffered from their fall. The urgent shouts of the crew were too far above to be heard, especially as the accident had slid a great distance down the sloped floor into an even deeper section of tunnels.

Clarkson was groggy, his head recognised this condition – it was horribly similar to a night of debauchery with a bottle of scotch. He groaned, lifting his hand to his forehead to press on a pulsing vein.

“Christ on a bike...” He hissed.

Clarkson opened his eyes. For a moment he saw nothing but very slowly the safety lights on the quad bike flickered into view. By their tiny, dying orbs he saw the faint outline of himself under the wreckage of the bike. No May...

“May?” he whispered, before coughing at the dirt in his throat. “May?” he tried again, lifting his head slightly. He instantly regretted it as a sharp twinge of pain ripped across his shoulder. “Bloody hell fire.”

“Ah _shit!_ ” Hammond woke up somewhere behind him. His bike was light and threw him off half way down the plummet. He'd landed mostly on the soft build up of decayed leaf litter but still managed to earn a nasty gash on his arm courtesy of a tree root. He sat up, startled by the stain of blood running down his arm. He'd received more than his fair share of knocks and bruises filming but never usually so graphic.

“You all right, mate?” Clarkson shouted.

“Hell of a flesh wound. Ow!” Hammond added, as he tried to pry his jacket down to get a better look. The fabric was stuck to the half dried blood and tugged at his torn skin. It had been long enough since the fall that the initial rush of adrenalin had worn off along with the temporary pain relief. “Oh my god... What the fuck happened?”

“No idea,” Clarkson answered, only vaguely aware that he was trapped under the quad bike. “Where's May?”

“He was on _your_ bike!” Richard pointed out, followed by more intense swearing and the rustle of material.

“Shit.” The Hamster was right. This time Clarkson tried to sit up properly and found the full weight of the quad bearing down on him. “Oh my god... Hammond!”

“What?” The world's angriest man snapped.

“I'm a cushion for my bloody bike!”

“What!?” he mumbled again. He'd taken off his singlet top now and was in the middle of tying it around his arm to stop it bleeding everywhere. It hurt like fucking buggery.

“Seriously – I'm stuck under it.” Clarkson reached forward and tried to see how bad it was but the light was rubbish. Instead, he felt around. Nothing hurt which was either a good sign or a really really _really_ bad one. “Hate bikes! Bloody dangerous things. Every time. Every _single_ time I fall off them.”

“In fairness, this time the bike fell _off_ you.”

“Hammond, this is no time for bickering.” Remarkably all this was still being filmed by their personal cameras both on the bikes and stuck to their helmets. Unhelpfully nothing was live streamed so it was useless to the crew panicking somewhere above them. “Got a torch or something?”

“Why would I have a torch?” Hammond replied. “Ah – but I have a phone – with no reception but...” There as a pause and then a beacon of light so strong it felt like a cruise ship turning into port. “It has a torch. Oh...”

They weren't in a cave. They were in an underground temple filled with metres of leaf litter, buried for thousands of years from the world above.

“Jeremy...” Hammond panned his torch light around their crypt. “I think we've found the lost city.”


	14. Deeper Underground

**Chapter 14: Deeper Underground**

'City' was probably a few steps too far. 'Temple' seemed apt for the stone fortress they found themselves entombed in. Richard Hammond's phone put out enough light to make out the stone pillars, ornately carved with gruesome scenes rising up to an unstable stone roof. Everything was held together with roots and stray vines many of which were still swinging from the disturbance. Their bikes had hit the ground to the left and slid down the sloped floor of the temple, finally stopped by the sheer depth of decayed build up. The sloped floor, however, continued on to their right, vanishing in darkness like the gaping mouth of the underworld.

“May!” Richard called out, when the light caught the crumpled figure of their colleague. He'd been thrown off to the other side, sprawled on the ground and silent. It was odd to see James May inert and quiet – usually he was letting out a great, thundering snore.

“Help me get this off!” Jeremy croaked, trying to push the weight of the quad from the lower half of his body.

Richard was closer to Jeremy and crawled over. With a few heaves and a serious rush of profanity the quad shifted enough for Jeremy to drag himself free. He was genuinely surprised to find himself unhurt. Richard gave him a relieved pat on the back before the pair of them turned their attention to May.

Moving through the leaf litter was hard. It was so deep that they sank to their knees. All manner of things brushed over their skin and Richard Hammond was trying desperately not to think about all the insects that were no doubt seething against his bare skin. _Jeans_. From now on he was taking a leaf out of Clarkson's travel book and forgoing the shorts.

May, as it turned out, had slid up to one of the enormous expanses of stone steps. They were able to crouch beside him comfortably while Hammond held the light on his face.

“James...” said Clarkson, hesitant to touch the other man even in his unconscious state. With a bit of courage he reached forward, brushing the ridiculously dark locks of hair off his face so they could see if he was breathing. He was.

“What do we do?”

Jeremy shrugged at Hammond. “I don't know. Never paid attention in any of those health and safety courses. You?”

“Buggered if I know,” Hammond whispered back.

“Oh for heaven's sake...” Jeremy eventually huffed, shifting so that he could lean down to listen to May's breathing. “He seems okay.”

“Well – wake him up.”

“He's not snoring though.”

Hammond frowned. “What has that got to do with anything?”

“If he's asleep, he should be snoring.”

“Honestly – your logic is infallible.”

“What?”

“Jeremy just – look I'll do it. You hold the phone.” Hammond took James by both shoulders and shook him firmly. Nothing. He frowned and tried again, shaking him a few more times than was necessary. “This looked much easier on Casualty.”

“Well, haven't you got to...” Jeremy nodded awkwardly at James.

When the penny dropped at a typically stupid Clarkson suggestion, Richard rolled his eyes and huffed. “How would that help?”

“It'd give him a shock!”

Hammond somehow moved so that he was straddling James but close enough to Jeremy to argue properly. “Give him a – I'm trying to wake him up, not kill him! This is _James_ we're talking about. 'James – don't shake my hand if we haven't been properly introduced or if you come from too far in the North' – May'.

“Well, how else are we going to wake him up? Threaten his light plane collection?”

“I don't know why don't you try something!”

While they were bickering, the body beneath them frowned at the bright light shining right in his eyes. James groaned and batted at the phone. “What the hell is going on?” he muttered. “Urgh, g'eoff!” James added, when he realised that the shirtless Hammond was basically sitting on his stomach. Heaven help him if he'd actually been injured.

Hammond yelped as the comfortable James beneath him moved. He darted to the side and helped the other man sit up. He seemed unharmed unlike Hammond who was still bleeding quite a bit more than he would have liked.

“Mate!” Hammond exclaimed, as both he and Jeremy helped May to sit up. The laid him against one of the morose pillars which images of humans lopping off each other's heads and eating them.

James was still half-blind from the god-awful light that had been shining in his eyes. “What's going on – where are we?”

“Slight bit of amnesia,” Jeremy noted. “Our bikes fell into a hole.”

“What?” James frowned, looking around.

“Well technically I think we fell into an old temple ruin,” Richard added helpfully.

James was struggling to process this. “Where's Andy, then?”

They both shrugged. “Hopefully safely above in the jungle wondering what the heck happened to his presenters.”

“And my bike?”

“ _Our_ bike,” Jeremy quickly corrected.

“Seriously James,” Richard shook his head, “we all nearly died and you're worried about your bike...”

“What of it?” James shrugged. He quite liked his bike.

“My god. The world could end in fire and brimstone and you'd be trying to get back home to check on your model trains.”

“So?”

“Okay...” Richard put himself between the two men before things got ugly. “Can we focus on the tiny problem of us being stuck in some creepy ruin with no way of climbing back up to the rest of the crew. Hey – where are the radios?”

“You lot have been awake longer than me.”

“We were too busy trying to save you to go looking for radios.” Jeremy defended.

“Much appreciated but perhaps we should go find them before Andy has an aneurysm?”

When May tried to stand he realised with a thundering crash of bones that he wasn't as uninjured as he'd have liked. Nothing was prodding out of his skin or anything but he was definitely bruised in all the wrong places. “Oh what the!” he exclaimed, as he fell to his knees, vanishing in the leaf litter which the others now knew how to navigate through. “What is this stuff?”

“Seriously mate, you don't want to know,” Hammond replied helpfully. “Try going slowly – it's not so deep where the bikes are.”

The Hamster was right, they could at least stand next to their bikes but none of that helped them find the radios. “This is impossible,” Jeremy finally admitted. “We've gone and dropped them in this stuff. No chance we'll ever find them again.”

James had given up ages ago and was currently attending to both the bikes which he'd rescued. They seemed to be in working order. Nothing that had snapped up was important to driving though he'd certainly miss the cute side mirrors on the quad.

“If we survive this – we're so dead,” Jeremy added. “Andy hates it when we pull shit like this.”

“It's not like I purposefully drove into a sink hole, Clarkson,” James glared from under his long, curled hair. “They don't mark, 'secret lost temples' on the map, you know. And I might add, quietly, that neither of you have congratulated me on finding the lost city we were looking for. I don't see the BBC anywhere nearby – do you? So it's safe to say we found it first. How about _that_ for Mr No Sense of Direction...”

“James,” insisted Jeremy rather dryly, “you didn't _find_ it, you _crashed_ into it. Without a doubt this was the least graceful discovery made by any expedition party in the history of exploration. The monument they erect in your honour will be one of those, 'warning – approaching cliff' signs on the side of the highway.”

“Paint's all chipped...” May muttered to himself, inspecting the bike again.

Jeremy threw his hands up in resignation.

Hammond picked up his bike, ignoring the bent handlebar and started rolling it up onto one of the stone steps. “Why don't we park the bikes here for a while – take our cameras – document our find and then see if there is a way out of this place?”

It was a reasonable plan that all three eventually agreed to. After a while even James was in good enough humour to mock Clarkson's impersonation of 'shakycam' as they stumbled about taking establishing shots of their underground temple.

“Violent...” James pointed to some of the more graphic pictograms.

“Yeah,” Richard agreed, “they were into lopping off limbs. If we find any dismembered skeletons down here I'm going to hurl. Warning you now.”

“Hammond – you weakling...” Clarkson complained.

“I'll dismember both of you if you don't give us a hand with this quad bike,” James grunted, trying in vain to push the crumbled thing to safety. “It's heavier than it looks.” Not to Clarkson. He took the machine by the seat and heaved it up onto the stone. Mind you, it helped if you were nine feet tall.

“Well, we came from somewhere up there,” Hammond finally announced with a reasonable degree of certainty. “Which is somewhere we're definitely not going to be able to go back to.” As it turned out, everything to the left of them was a steep uphill climb through a completely ruined expanse of fallen stone and collapsed pillars. How they'd survived it in the first place was anybody's guess. “There's no passageways and unless either of you can climb onto that second level up there, we'll have to go deeper. What are you doing?” Hammond was interrupted as Jeremy took hold of his arm and untied the singlet top tourniquet.

“While James was fussing with the bikes, I found this...” he held up a long bandage. “There was a medkit in the back of the quad. Thought it might be better.”

“Ah – thank you, Dr Clarkson?” He'd reserve judgement until he survived with both arms. He was surprised how careful Jeremy attempted to be. They both sat down and Jeremy used an alcoholic wipe to clean up the gash on Richard's arm. Actually, when all the blood and grit was cleared away it didn't look so bad. Technically he needed stitches and it was certainly going to leave a bigger scar than the crash but it wasn't fatal.

Jeremy concentrated hard as he finished clipping the bandage in place and then sat back with a satisfied nod.

“That all hurt, you know,” Hammond experimentally touched his bandaged arm.

“I hope you've learned your lesson about bikes.”

Hammond only managed a glare. Seriously, this wasn't the fault of the damn bikes!

“If you've stopped mucking about playing nurse, I've found something.” James was standing at the edge of the 'tunnel'. Just shy of the darkness he brought them all to a stop and knelt down and it was only then that they realised how lucky they'd all been.


	15. Rubbish Explorers

**Chapter 15: Rubbish Explorers**

Jeremy whistled dramatically as he leaned over the ledge with Hammond (of all people) gripping onto the back of his shirt as a counterweight. Of course, they resembled a Beetle trying to tow a Land Cruiser out of a tight spot. Everyone knew how that story ended.

“Who puts a cliff in a temple?” Jeremy asked, finally swaying back to the relative safety of the lichen covered stones.

“Probably the same person who put two bikes and three idiots in it.”

James rolled his eyes at Hammond. “We've been through this. It was an _accident_.”

“We thought you died!” Jeremy insisted, feigning concern.

“You seem rather cut up that I survived.”

“We'll get over it,” Jeremy shrugged. “It would have made for great TV. Wait – is it still 'TV' if it comes off the internet?”

Hammond blinked very patiently at the ape. “Yes, Jeremy.”

“...but – _why?_ Shouldn't be called, 'laptop' or 'iddybitty phone'?”

Hammond lurched forward, resting his head on James's back in complete resignation. He didn't have the energy to debate the semantics of the digital age with Jeremy while they were trapped in a jungle ruin. James let him rest for a moment before walking off leaving Hammond to canter awkwardly.

“James – _James!_ Where are you going?” Jeremy grunted irritably as May wandered off. They hadn't finished arguing about television yet. Later, Jeremy amended his plea to, “What are you doing?” As May paused in front of the bikes and started shifting them slightly.

“They're not straight, man...” James replied, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. He was making sure that their tires lined up correctly with the edge of the stone steps they were parked on.

Jeremy, hands on his hips, was shaking his head. “Neither are these pillars but I don't see you carrying on about those.”

James tilted his head up toward the great slabs of stone holding up the roof. Jeremy was right. “I'll allow that in thousands of years they may have lost some of their structural integrity. I'm not an unreasonable man.”

“Okay... can we _not_ discuss that while we're trapped down here entirely dependent on the structural integrity of the wonky columns... Oh god James, now what are you doing?”

This time there was a little more sincerity in Jeremy's tone as he watched May awkwardly climb onto one of the broken bits of temple rock. It was like watching your grandmother cosplay Lara Croft but to his credit, James was soon standing on the lump of temple, surveying his next option.

“You're going to break something.” Hammond joined Jeremy to watch the inevitable downfall of their co-presenter.

“Yeah – like your Spaniel head.”

“Don't be such a Nancy, Clarkson.”

“Is he -” Richard leaned closer to Jeremy to whisper, “-trying to climb up onto that precarious balcony?”

“Nah – he wouldn't – _James! Get down from there, you muppet!_ ” Jeremy suddenly shouted as James enthusiastically clambered onto a collapsed beam lying against the balcony. Its slope looked climbable _just_ if you were Bear Grylls. James very much wasn't.

“He's gonna die.”

“You better get it on camera,” Jeremy nudged Richard, who pulled out their hand held camera and adjusted the focus on May. He was crawling up the scared surface of the stone pillar, glancing nervously at the drop either side of him, making a mental note to fall _right_ into the leaf litter rather than _left_ onto the unforgiving stone steps. “I can't watch...” Jeremy hid his face behind one of his paws.

Hammond momentarily turned to get Jeremy's confidence on camera before zooming back in as May, suspended high above the ground, reached the top of the pillar and considered the dilemma of exactly how he was going to climb onto the balcony. He'd have to get off his knees and pry one of his hands off the column to reach over to it – something that he didn't seem to be overly keen on.

His trepidation was tangible as he reached out, hand wavering a scant few inches from the edge of the balcony before May chickened out and clung back onto the pillar. His personal mic caught the hushed barrage of expletives.

“Is he dead yet?” Jeremy asked, from behind his hand.

“Nah,” Hammond assured him. “Though he is the worst Indian Jones TV has ever seen.”

“I'm a Motor Journalist!” May bellowed from his perch on the pillar. “Not a bloody adrenaline junky, metro-latte-sipping-gym-loving-hipster-wannabe-tiny-cocked-bodybuilder.”

“Wow...” Hammond said slowly. “Do you feel better now that you've cleared that up?”

“Yes.” May said simply, before reaching out to the balcony again. He had to partially stand in order to reach it and for one terrifying moment, when even Hammond shut his eyes, May wobbled toward the fall before lugging his out-of-shape arse up over the railing. He landed on the relative safety of the balcony with a solid _thud._

“...May?” Hammond eventually called out after filming several minutes of empty temple.

“ _Oh chaps”_ came the reply from above. _“You've got to see this!”_

The pair of them looked at what James had survived, considering the pillar with equal reservation. For Hammond, part of him feared that his often criticised height would prevent his limbs from reaching the necessary footholds while Jeremy, well, he was simply worried that his sheer enormity would bring the whole temple crashing down. Those pillars really _did_ look lopsided.

Dutifully (though mostly because they wanted to present Andy with a gift to soften his fury) they left one of the cameras mounted to the bike, facing the pillar so that their dreadful climbing and potential deaths were documented. Jeremy tried really hard not to think how embarrassing it would be if another explorer stumbled on their remains in a few hundred years then watched the footage of them ungracefully falling to their deaths.

“Hey – I can see one of the radios!” Jeremy looked down at the small red light flashing amongst the leaf litter.

“Oy – focus!” James hissed at him, grabbing Jeremy unceremoniously by the shoulders before pulling him over the edge of the balcony. Next was Hammond who thankfully seemed to share a gene set with Spider Monkeys. “See – what did I tell you, eh?”

“James...” Jeremy stared at the reason he'd climbed all the way up here. “You utter _utter_ pillock!”

Richard Hammond went the same shade of green as the vine twisted through the eye socket of the corpse in front of them.

“Brilliant,” James remarked, kneeling down next to the skeleton. To James, it was obviously very old – long past 'gross' and well into the 'Egyptian Mummy' fascination stage.

Clarkson crinkled his nose, certain that the scent of death was suddenly choking the air. It was all a little too real when staring at what they (honestly) could quite easily become if they didn't get their asses into gear and hook up with their production team again. They didn't even have any food with them beyond Hammond's confectionery.

“Dibs on killing James,” Clarkson insisted.

“I've known him longer.”

“ _I_ went to the North Pole with him.”

“You _asked_ to go to the North Pole with him.” Richard pointed out. Jeremy had written the whole bloody premise of that particular torture-fest with, he was certain, an aim of exacting revenge on Hammond's accidental emptying of Clarkson's wine cellar.

“Aww Clarkson,” James remarked, listening to the pair of them squabble. “You should've said.”

“It was that or run behind a sleigh of shitting dogs,” Jeremy replied dryly.

“Gee. Thanks. My company is preferable to physical work and being covered in shit.”

“We'll put it on your epitaph, if you like,” Jeremy offered rather more seriously than James would have liked considering the body at their feet.

“Neither of you are going to be allowed anywhere near my epitaph,” he insisted. They'd draw cocks all over it.

“How do you plan on ensuring that?” Richard asked.

“I shall live forever.”

“Good plan. Genius plan. One slight _tiny_ hitch though.”

“What's that, Hammond?”

“How do we get out of this ruddy temple?”

*~*~*

Andy really was furious. That was how genuine concern manifested across his well-furrowed forehead. He paced by the Range Rovers, wondering what he was going to do about three missing presenters.


	16. Ambitious (but rubbish)

**Chapter 16: Ambitious (but rubbish)**

“I can't look at it,” Richard insisted, holding his hands over his face while Jeremy honed in on the skeleton with a schoolboy fascination. He and James were prodding it to check it wasn't a zombie or anything. “Stop it. I can hear you playing with it. Just _stop_. Urgh it's so disgusting...”

“Would you relax...” Jeremy insisted. “James and I are trying to do some proper TV work over here so keep the incessant bleating to a minimum. You're a hamster – not a goat.”

“You couldn't hold a camera straight if it was duct-taped to your forehead,” Richard snapped, hand still over his face. That gave him a rather distressing vision of a Cyclops-style Jeremy wandering about with a phone taped to his face. What were those things sport people always had? _Go-Pros_. Yeah, if they strapped a _Go-Pro_ to Jeremy it'd mostly be the frequent approach of a glass of wine occasionally drowed out by _Genesis_.

Well, Hammond's assessment was probably fair but Jeremy was doing his best to impersonate a David Attenborough program with James posing as the aging naturalist, knelt beside the skeleton giving a running commentary of their adventures so far. When they got bored (and the quality of the reporting nose-dived into jokes about James's hair colour) they wandered off to survey the rest of the balcony.

“Sheesh...” James stepped back off a section of stone floor that made an ominous creak. “Operational Health and Safety would love this.”

“This is why I burned the manuals,” Clarkson interjected. “If we stopped to pay attention to every dot point in their manifesto we'd never get any life-threatening comedy into the cut. Oh hey-”

“No.” Richard said immediately, as Clarkson broke away and headed off ahead, drawn by something shiny. “I think we need to get one of those leashes for him,” he added, catching up to James who was still dutifully filming on the off chance Jeremy was eaten by a giant, mutant spider.

“I don't think they come in ape-size,” replied James thoughtfully, as Jeremy vanished into one of the rooms burrowed off the left side of the balcony.

“Shouldn't we be looking for a way out?”

“This counts as looking for a way out,” James replied. “Fool that he is, Clarkson has the right approach, we need to go back up toward the ground level if we want to get out of here – unless you fancy scaling down that cliff into the depths of whatever this place is.”

“No thanks. I've seen Alien vs Predator. That taught me all I need to know about underground temples.”

At which point James realised that he'd chosen to go exploring through the jungle in a mystery part of the world with two of the least capable companions on the planet. Secretly he was hoping that this was all part of Andy's plan and that there was a film crew hidden down here, ready to step in if they really did push the line too close to actual danger. Except... when James stopped to think about it, not even masochist Andy would have let them plummet two stories with a pair of bikes in tow. His ribs still hurt.

James was about to say something intelligent when he was interrupted by an almighty crash of rock-on-rock followed by an ominous grinding noise that sounded awfully like-

He didn't get to finish his train of thought as Jeremy came careening around the corner in what was without question the fastest James had ever seen him move. Like a Lamborghini with too much power, he skidded on the floor as he rounded the corner and shouted, 'Run!!!'

“ROCK!” Clarkson elaborated. So far all the others could see was a petrified Jeremy racing toward them and the sound of something grumbling deep in the temple.

“What do you mean, 'rock'?” asked James, as Jeremy neared them. He was still going full throttle.

“I mean rock. Boulder. Run!”

Hammond started to get nervous. Physical exertion was not becoming of Jeremy and yet here he was – running like his life depended on it. Richard started to worry that it might. “Ah James – do you think we should?”

“Boulder, James. The word is BOULDER OF DEATH!”

“That's three words...” May replied, unconvinced.

Clarkson reached them just as a huge stone sphere hit the end of the balcony where Jeremy had emerged and started rolling towards them.

“Holy shit!” Hammond leapt backwards, half tripped and then kicked his arse into gear, zipping off after Jeremy.

Actually, thought both James and Hammond as they bolted along the fragile balcony that was swaying with the enormous weight of the boulder bearing down on them, it was surprising just how fast Jeremy could run with the proper motivation. He had ludicrously proportioned legs. James soon found himself last with the boulder uncomfortably close to his heels. It was funny, he'd often thought how cool it would be in his youth, being an adventurer but when you were toe to toe with cold stone it rather lost its appeal.

“Blimey!” James hissed, lunging forward faster, trying to put a few more feet ahead of the boulder. They were quickly running out of balcony – an issue that Jeremy would have to tackle first.

“Oh my word...” Jeremy hissed from up in front. He was about to be faced with two unappealing options – leap off the balcony (to the left, not in front. He didn't go to the 'Prometheus school of running away from things'). Option two was attempting to plaster himself against the wall and hope that all those pies he'd scoffed down on the flight over hadn't made him too wide.

“Jeremy!” Hammond shouted from behind. “Jump! Jump!”

“I'm not jumping off the sodding balcony!” Jeremy yelled back, now officially out of room. The others – and the boulder – were catching up fast.

“JUMP YOU DAFT FOOL!”

“No!”

“OFF!!!”

*~*~*

Many. Many. _Many_ hours later, three dishevelled presenters sat in front of furious producer, nursing their cups of tea. They smelled horrific and were covered in decayed leaf litter, crushed insects and bits of whatever that orange substance had been covering the cave walls on the way out.

Andy paced – then stopped – took a shaky breath – and paced again. None of them were sure how long this went on for until Andy finally spoke.

“I'm going to kill you,” he started slowly. “Resurrect you. Then fire you – then _fucking murder you._ ”

Richard stooped down toward his tea, whispering so that the other two could hear him whisper, “Do you think he's slightly annoyed with us?”

“Richard!” Andy bellowed.

Hammond knew he was properly in trouble. Andy never called him, 'Richard'.

Andy was only slightly mellowed by Clarkson's offering of the footage they'd recorded from their adventures. He took the camera, eyed it for longer than Clarkson felt comfortable holding his breath, before he seemed to calm down a bit and ask they obvious question.

“Where are the bikes?”

“Oh _shit!_ ” May face-palmed himself. “We forgot about the bikes!”

The bikes took another half day to retrieve which Jeremy put to good use sleeping. James strutted around the makeshift camp worrying about his bike while Hammond found a large boulder to perch on. He refused to come down off it for fear of insects and, when even the promise of rice crispies failed to lure him, the production team began serious discussions about animal capture.

“Did you see the footage?” Jeremy wandered up to rock where Hammond was perched. Although Hammond considered himself to be well aloft, Jeremy barely had to tilt his head to reach him.

“Yeah – it looks like something out of one of those C-grade horror films designed to look as though they were shot by drug-addled teens.”

“Firstly,” Jeremy pointed out in reply, “most of those _were_ shot by drug-addled teens or _college students_ in the common tongue. Secondly – none of them were in any actual peril. I was!”

“We were. Well, James was. He really is a shit runner.”

“Doesn't matter what the papers say, it's survival of the fastest.”

Which, annoyingly, was Jeremy.

“When I look at you,” Richard began, resting his head on his hands as he lounged over his chosen rock-bed, “I _know_ there's no god. Only blind random statistical _error_ could lead to something like you.”

“I love you too, Hammond. Ouch...” Jeremy rubbed his thinning hair where Hammond hit him. The Hamster edged forward on his rock, trying to hit Jeremy again.

“Inwardly,” was James's first word upon his sudden arrival. For such an awkward creature he really did have a terrible habit of sneaking up on people – or appearing in a room where no one had any idea how long he'd been present. It must be reassuring to know that he could always fall back into assassin work if this gig didn't pan out. “Andy's really chuffed. I can tell. I caught him smiling before behind the catering truck when he thought no one was looking. He'd trying to blood in his new producers.”

“I think one of them fainted when we vanished into the hole,” Jeremy replied proudly. “And they say this stuff is scripted.”

“To be fair, it's probably in Andy's script. I can see it now, _'Act 5 – Presenters fall into concealed pit of death'_.”

“ _Act 7 – James's body found at base of strange statue.”_

James levelled a glare at Jeremy. He was still sore about the whole, 'nearly dying' thing. 'Boulder' wasn't his chosen method of execution – too messy.

“Don't be sore, James,” Jeremy insisted. “Remember, this isn't the BBC. Our families get double our contract if we die. In your case, James, it'll be your cat.”

“Sod _off_.”

Jeremy and Richard broke into giggles. Like girls, they snickered, heads bowed, shoulders shaking. James stared with venomous eyes. Bastards!

“It's not that funny,” James pleaded weakly, when they wouldn't shut up. “Anyone would think I was the most eligible, flamboyant deviant the way you lot carry on.”

“Well, we weren't going to mention it but you do have rather a reputation.”

James folded his arms protectively over his chest. “Perhaps. Built solely by the pair of you. Half of Britain thinks I have a dungeon in my garage.”

Hammond was starting to worry that if he didn't breath through the laughter soon he was going to asphyxiate. He lifted his head up to get a better go of the air when suddenly two sets of paws reached up and took him roughly by the arms, dragging him down off his beloved rock.

“Oy! Hey! Ge'off!” he squirmed, wriggling about in James and Jeremy's firm grip.

“We got him!” shouted Jeremy, back at the crew.

Andy, who'd been staying out of sight until now, emerged and gave them the thumbs up.

That's how you captured hamsters.


	17. Sorry Chaps

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which James gets a paint job, Producers make coffee and Jeremy shouts at something.

**Chapter 17: Sorry Chaps**

“It doesn't count.”

May was moments away from an aneurysm. His blood slowly boiled, the moderately alcoholic mixture rising in his cheeks as a faint flush. “What do you mean, 'it doesn't count'?” he echoed incredulously.

Andy shrugged. “Pretty straight forward. The challenge was to find a lost city. You boys found a temple – and – congratulations and all on that. It was a heart attack well earned but a temple all the same. If I asked you to find me a shark you don't crack open the champagne for a piranha.”

“You're a hard man,” Jeremy shook his head.

“You're not seriously going along with this?” May was still brooding over the whole thing.

Jeremy shrugged. “He has a point, mate. I mean – do you see the BBC queuing up to look at the ruined bit of stone over there? No. Because it's just one of the thousand relics hunting about in this part of the world.” Whatever part of the world it actually turned out that they were in. Never mind, Jeremy was sure that it was full of decrepit temples all the same. “Onwards, man.”

James crossed his arms over his chest defiantly. “Can't. Bikes don't work.”

Jeremy twitched oddly. “Oh... Do we – have to...” he trailed off, looking pale.

“Fix them,” James finished Jeremy's thoughts for him. “Yeah, I'd imagine so. The support team aren't too keen on helping us after Andy made them trek down and retrieve the bikes from the 'rubbish temple'.”

“Are you telling me that you're the best mechanic we've got to fix them?”

“I'm _always_ the best mechanic you _moron_.”

...Well, that might not have been entirely accurate but when it came to bikes, May was more than capable of caressing them back to health. Jeremy on the other hand, wasn't much good at all. The safest place for him was by the makeshift fire, drinking his way through the crew's supply of gin. Every time he wandered over, intent on helping, May distracted him with the most dreary task he could think of until he lost interest and meandered back to the fire to roast bugs – or whatever it was that orang-utan's did.

Hammond _would have_ been helpful, except he was off somewhere in the midnight jungle on an animal sighting expedition. No, not his choice. One of the producers thought it would be hilarious to film him freaking out at the various life threatening things they were likely to find on their walk. May couldn't fault them on that. There was nothing more entertaining than watching Richard Hammond squeal at the sight of an ant.

“Oh _bollocks!_ ” May mumbled, when he dropped yet another bolt in the dirt. He'd been disturbed by his radio crackling obnoxiously to life with the ghoulish sound of _Genesis_ blaring. Evidently Jeremy was bored. _'Knock it off, you twat!'_ James shouted over his shoulder. Jeremy – who he noticed was holding his headphones up to the ipod – lifted his hand to his ear, pretending he couldn't hear May. He wondered if there was any point reminding Jeremy that it was Richard who turned several shades of murderous zombie at the sound of _Genesis_ , not him. May was only irritated by the quality of the sound coming over the radio.

Eventually May wandered over to the fire and threw a small, broken screw at Jeremy's head. It bounced off with an unnerving _'clink'_ as though he were made of plasterboard. “If you're insistent on being such an annoying prick about it, why don't you bring the headphones over to the bikes. At least I'll be able to tell which song you're subjecting me to.”

And that's how a lucky junior cameraman ended up getting footage of Jeremy and James sharing a pair of earphones. James calmly fixed the bikes while Jeremy hummed along and tapped his foot for many hours, tied to James by a thin, white cord.

Hammond was having a traumatic experience.

One thing was immediately clear – he'd learned bugger all on his previous nature documentaries. His public persona as a farm boy was only valid for the very specific setting of picturesque, manicured fields, small flocks of sheep and a decorative smattering of mud. It did _not_ cover jungles full of deadly inhabitants with hamster on the menu.

“What is that? _What is that!_ WHAT IS THAT?” And so it went on. For hours. “How is this helping locate the lost city? Why can't I stay with the others and fix the bikes? I'm good at bikes. I like bikes. Bikes are fine.”

There were many reasons why he was called, 'the hamster'. Tonight, the crew caught on camera another. He had a remarkable ability to hop about like the tiny rodent namesake, bouncing from side to side of the pathway as though it were made of fire. They half expected him to grow a tail and pair of ears. It would suit him.

When he returned to camp he was white with huge, dilated pupils from spending so long in the dark. _Vampire_ came to mind, thought James, as Hammond sat down near them in the makeshift garage. Garage was kind. It was a few logs serving as tent poles with bits of canvas strung over them so poorly that there were large swathes in the ceiling where the stars shone through. The quad bike was fixed, now James was focused on Richard's bike. Jeremy (still attached by earphone) was asleep, slumped against the pylon. James wasn't sure what was worse, the snoring or the music.

“Careful, there's a ring of salt around the bikes.”

Hammond frowned. “Wha'?”

James smiled to himself and waved him off. “Nothing.”

Richard took a cursory look at his bike. It was still a patient in the ER but soon it'd be move to a private ward to recover. If there was nothing else to be said about James May – he could fix a bike. He'd even to the paint job when he was done. Sometimes Richard was certain that May treated every mechanical job like a scalextric model. Unfortunately that also meant that it'd take him all night.

“Beer?”

May's reply was a nod. Hammond found them an esky full. He dragged it between them and decided to help with the bike. May tugged out his earphone and turned off Jeremy's ipod so that he wouldn't rage in the morning about the damn thing being out of battery for, 'some reason'.

“They took the brunt of the fall,” May remarked. “Actually we're pretty lucky. I'm sure that the tires absorbed some of the impact and that handlebar,” he pointed over Hammond's shoulder at the quad bike, “kept my wrist from snapping in half. Did you watch the film of it?”

Hammond shook his head. “Nah. I'd rather not know – you know? It's a bit late to be worried about my neck. I should have done that when I was signing the contracts.”

“You're only sore about that time you-”

Hammond shoved May's shoulder so hard he swayed awkwardly. The booze meant it took him a moment to teeter back to a stable position.

“Never. Ever. Mentioning that again. Remember?”

“Make yourself useful and go straighten that bit,” May handed the smaller toolbox that he'd nicked from the crew to Hammond.

Hours passed and the bike finally returned to its former glory and then surpassed it. Admittedly the pair of them got a bit carried away – then far too drunk to perform mechanical tasks. It was only when Hammond went to town with an offensively lurid can of spray paint that James rather hazily thought, _oh shit_.

*~*~*

_Oh fuck._

“HAMMOND!” A creature from the depths of the jungle bellowed in the early hours of the morning. “MAY – YOU COCKS!”

The obviously guilty parties were asleep beside the crime scene surrounded by a halo of empty beer bottles and half eaten chip packets.

“S-ff...” May mumbled in his sleep.

Jeremy translated that to, 'sod off' and instantly gave him a gentle shove with his foot.

“May you treacherous wanker – arise so I can shout at you!”

James rolled over onto his side and curled up to the empty esky. Jeremy tilted his head at him almost pitifully. It was difficult to shout at a sleeping May – well, it was until it started snoring.

“Breathe! It's not that fecking difficult. Oxygen goes into your lungs and then comes back out and is donated to the trees. If the rest of the population breathed as poorly as you this would be a planet of deserts and scorpions. It's just _noise_. You're a poorly tuned V8 coughing up rocks and bits of broken beer bottles. Honestly you are the only human being that I have ever encountered that can snore whilst partially conscious. MAY!”

“Are you – cursing at James while he's asleep?” Andy strolled by, coffee cupped protectively in his hands. Jeremy didn't say anything in reply. Andy's gaze drifted to the bikes causing a quite smirk to creep onto his lips. James was going to be furious with _himself_ when he woke up and realised what he'd done to his own bike.

Hammond rolled onto his back and held his ears to stop the sounds of a raging lunatic from coming in. Somewhere off to the side, a cameraman zoomed in on his chest where a perfectly harmless (though extremely large) stick insect was currently exploring. At a glance, it looked like a terrifying mutant spider from Mars.

Andy was still amused by Jeremy's transference of rage. Poor James, he was almost certain that the beautifully pimped bikes were a joint effort with Richard. “Try to remember that some of the crew are still asleep – so perhaps try your inside-shouty-voice for a while.” Then Andy wandered off back to the main camp where the civilised humans were sorting out steaming urns of coffee. The young producers that were in the midst of a few catastrophic mental breakdowns yesterday were alive and well, hovering near the fire where yet more operational health and safety manuals had met their demise.

That left Jeremy frowning at his two 'mates' soon to be ex-mates. “Wake up!” he grunted at both of them.

May's tolerance was the first to snap. “Clarkson!” he snapped groggily as he sat up. “Stop bellowing.” He regretted sitting up. As he did he was certain a few screws fell loose – in his brain. “Mercy...”

Clarkson managed to stay quiet long enough for May to get his eyes working. The (slightly) younger man squinted up at him with a puzzled look.

“What are you on about?” May asked.

Clarkson simply shifted his weight and gestured at the fluorescent orange quad bike surrounded by incriminating beer bottles and chocolate wrappers form the night's antics. It had about fifty extra mirrors and a racing stripe – in purple – which clashed horribly with its high-vis paint job.

May was more troubled by a different revelation.

Without replying to Clarkson, he turned around and shouted at the semi-sleeping Hammond. “Hammond! Why am I _green_?”

...it wasn't just that at some point during the night they'd decided it would be a good idea to spray paint James May's shoes bright green – it was that they'd had some kind of disagreement about 'enough green paint' resulting in the entirety of James May painted green.

“Match the bike...” Hammond mumbled back sleepily. His eyes were closed and he was blissfully unaware of his pet stick insect.

“But – I match YOUR bike you daft hamster.”


	18. Hunting the BBC

**Chapter 18: Hunting the BBC**

“It suits you.”

“ _It doesn't!”_ Came the indignant growl from in front. The quad beneath them practically shook with May's volatile mood.

“It does.” Jeremy replied quietly.

“ _IT DOESN'T!!!”_ he shouted, sending a small flock of birds above screaming into the sunlight.

“Honestly James – it helps you blend in seamlessly with our surrounds,” Jeremy insisted. He'd been relegated passenger status on the quad – an entirely fair decision after he'd voiced his desire to try out a new motorsport; _Quad Air_.

“Then why are _you_ wearing sunglasses?”

“Hangover.”

The radio beside them crackled into life. _“I wish I was colour blind.”_

“ _Hamsters are colour blind.”_ Came Clarkson's swift reply.

If there was any laughter in response, it was muffled by the crashing of leaves against Hammond's face when he strayed too close to the less-than-friendly jungle. They were beating a path with their bodies and bikes, following James's (admittedly flimsy) theory that the lost city was down stream. Beyond the bike and glare of James May, all Clarkson could see was more of the same rubbish jungle.

“Why do people spend so much time muttering into their lattes trying to save places like this?” he asked, in typical Clarkson rant. “Honestly, jungles are rubbish! If they had to spend five minutes actually existing among the bugs, humidity, near-constant rain, miserable food (which on a good day is just fried bits of tarantula), May's snoring and imminent death, they'd be less inclined towards the whole thing. We weren't meant for jungles. Humans were born on the open grass lands. Save the grass lands.”

James wished that _he was blind_ , if only so that he didn't have to suffer the vision of his own fluorescent reflection from the billion or so new mirrors they'd unwisely welded to the front of the bike. If he came home looking like a garden gnome, Sarah would toss him out on the street. “When I find out which member of the crew let us have spray paint when we were smashed I'll -”

“You'll – what?”

“There – well – there will be very cross words.” James flinched sadly as Jeremy snickered behind him.

“James is the only man that I know who can be politely cross with people,” he informed the cameras. “When he says, 'cross words' what he actually means is a few incoherent grumblings while he offers tea and biscuits.”

“I don't do that!” James debated.

“James – did you or did you not offer the paparazzi camped outside your door _tea_?”

“Well...” James cleared his throat awkwardly.

“More than once?”

“Bugger.”

“You see – you can't help yourself. You're genetically engineered to balance out Hammond's perpetual crossness.”

 _'Yeah – I can hear you.'_ The radio barked.

James set about pouting for the next ten minutes, which Clarkson used to catch a few studio links. He turned to the support car, trundling along beside them in a hurricane of bits of broken tree.

“Viewers, if you've just tuned in to the internet's only motoring show, I have taken two reasonably priced presenters into the jungle and entered them into a race. At the moment we're not sure where this race finishes – or if indeed we are even on the correct racecourse.” How had James put it earlier? 'A feeling'. His argument for the route really was flimsy even by his worrisome standards. It was loosely based on the idea that early cultures centred around water sources. Personally Jeremy thought James had spent too much time reading Jared Diamond. Judging by the location of the temple and path the water was taking through it, he unreasonably surmised that the rest of the city was at the end of this muddy track of road that was proving a hazard to everything with wheels. It was only a few more minutes before Andy shouted over the radio.

_'Stop – stop – everybody stop.'_

Camera truck B had sunk all the way to its arches and wasn't going anywhere.

“It's like hugging a giant cucumber.” Jeremy complained, as James looked for somewhere to pull up that wasn't infested by deadly insects. They scaled several rough patches, nearly throwing Jeremy clear off.

“Well don't hold on so tightly then, man! I have a boa-constrictor as a passenger.”

“The last time I was on the back of a bike under your control, we very nearly plummeted to our death so excuse me while I cling on for dear life.”

“I hate you.” James said, sincerely.

Jeremy laid his head on James's back even though he knew that he'd be made to suffer for it later. It was worth it for the rushes. “I love you.”

May immediately pulled a handbrake turn, trying to shake his clingy passenger off.

The mud was like something thought up in the depths of hell for sheer amusement. It was, quite simply, the most impossible combination of slippery marble dust and decayed organic matter plastered to everything and everyone that gave absolutely no traction in return for its unwanted affection. All the vehicles in their possession had spent at least an hour either stuck or towing something out that was stuck. It was getting to the point that Clarkson was certain it would be easier to simply carry the Range Rovers through the forest.

“No.”

Hammond and May – equally covered in mud standing by the edge of the river, glared at their lazy colleague.

“What do you mean, 'no'?” Hammond asked. And no, he didn't care that he had several twigs sticking out of his hair. He'd earned those fishing a camera boom out of the river.

“The opposite of 'yes'.”

“Thank you, dictionary Clarkson. No to _what_?”

Clarkson had long ago abandoned the bike and was now sipping something that pretended to be tea. He shifted his weight and pointed with his tea cup to the swiftly sinking car. “I'm not going over there. How many times did I say it – the water is too deep for a ponce like that at the wheel. Power, that's what you need when fording rivers.”

Actually, thought May, what you needed was a little bit of care and shit loads of luck but neither he nor Hammond were in the mood to go toe to toe with him over manual labour.

“It's a moot point anyway,” May sighed and sat down. “They banned us from helping after you lost a Go-Pro.”

“I know _exactly_ where it is,” Clarkson insisted.

Yeah. So did everyone else. At the bottom of the bloody river.

Hammond spent the few hours while they were sidelined inspecting the various wounds he'd acquired last night. Every time this happened (and if he was honest, it happened a lot more than was reasonable for a man of his age) he emerged with an array of battle scars. The graze on his leg was _definitely_ from his bike falling onto him, probably because they didn't put the rest down properly. There were smudges of green on his hands that he was hiding from May (because he almost _certainly_ was responsible for painting him green) and miscellaneous bruises on both arms.

May, meanwhile, could only see _green_. It was remarkable – even more so because the green extended beyond the reach of his clothes. He hated to think how that had happened... He had a horrible fear that he'd been laid out on the ground, half naked whilst being spray painted like some London back alley by a rodent. _Jesus_ how undignified.

What if it was _filmed_.

“May...”

“Yes, Clarkson,” James replied, a slightly paler shade of green.

“Your hair is green.”

“Yes _thank you_ , Captain Obvious.”

“You think _you've_ got problems,” Hammond complained, sulking. “My bike is _orange._ It's almost as unfashionable as your Merc.”

Jeremy reacted as though a knife had been plunged straight through his heart. Noisy and brash as he was, he had a squishy warm spot for his recently sold car. “Don't talk about my ex like that.”

Hammond gave May a cheeky grin.

“It's probably sitting in a scrap yard somewhere. All by itself. Wondering what it did wrong as the big steel jaws approach.”

Clarkson was close to tears, hands over his ears now so that he couldn't hear any more. “Stop it. Stop it. Stop it!”

May joined in. “Playing its one little CD – _Genesis_ wondering where its daddy is.”

In the background, their radio were constantly crackling in and out of life. Even the internet broadcaster was going to need some _beeps_ to filter out the creative array of swearing going on with the support team.

“I've just had a thought.”

“Oh no...” Hammond and May replied at the same time.

“No – no, don't be like that. It's a good idea – useful even.”

“Well, out with it then, if it's so brilliant,” said May.

“You know how we're kind of a bit lost right now...” There was a general murmur of agreement. The truth was they'd been well off track ever since they fell down that bloody hole. “Well... all we really need to do is find out where the BBC are and – catch up.”

“Great plan – excellent idea,” Hammond replied. “There's just one, teeny tiny problem.”

“What?”

“...how are we going to find out where he BBC are? I don't know if you've noticed but we're kind of in the middle of the bloody jungle. Hell, we don't even know which jungle.”

“You see – that right there is the brilliance of my plan. I've thought ahead. Do you remember when we were back in that village before we started – you know – the one with the dog James tried to pet?”

“The one that nearly took half his hand off...” Hammond seemed to follow. “...and probably gave him seven different diseases.”

“That exact one. While you two were trying to make friends with stray plague carriers, I went into the only shop to buy some fags and happened across one of the BBC's camera men.”

“What – in the shop where we were? No...” Hammond perked up a bit.

“Oh yes, they were all there. They're better than blending in than we are. So – I followed him back to their support team.”

“Stalked,” May helped.

“Stalked them back to the support team where I cunningly slipped my work phone into a hidey hole in the back of their vehicle.” The other two were looking at him like he was utterly mad. “What?”

“Well, hang on a minute...” Hammond shifted so that he could frown properly at Jeremy. “How's that going to help? Now you've lost your phone _and_ the BBC.”

“No – it's brilliant! I've still got my personal phone,” Jeremy pulled it out of his pocked. “So, yes, here we go – turn on, _find my phone_ and there – now we know where they are.”

The other two were both horrified and impressed by Clarkson's sheer dumb luck. They may not have had internet but the GPS system was still working. There, on the tiny map, was a blue dot indicating Clarkson's poor phone in enemy territory.

“That's actually – well, it _kills me to say it._ ”

“Go on...”

Hammond sighed. “Brilliant.”

  
  


  
  



	19. Find My Phone

**Chapter 19: Find My Phone**

Andy was one-hundred-percent certain that this counted as cheating. Worse – the stupid idiots hadn't allowed for the fact that the BBC might be entirely misguided in their search for the lost city and all Jeremy was achieving right now was the safe recovery of his phone. Which he shouldn't have lost in the first place. Which _technically speaking_ was actually company property.

“We're meant to be finding a city not a phone...” he complained loudly over the radio, for what must have been the thousandth time in the last few hours.

 _'You've said that.'_ Jeremy's reply was dry and swift. “Several times,” he added, after he'd clicked off the radio. He couldn't help a private grin when he eyed his driver – the still-very-green James May. They'd playfully named Richard's bike, 'The Setting Of The Sun' – which irritated him to no end.

_'Jeremy, have you considered the possibility that your phone has been tossed out with the trash and we're actually hunting a rubbish truck through the jungle?'_

Jeremy simply huffed and pretended that his radio was suddenly broken.

When it became clear that after a day's pursuit they were no closer to retrieving the phone, the production team rebelled and made camp in the midst of the jungle. James was convinced that they'd deliberately chosen a camp site with no watering holes so that he'd have to remain green for the foreseeable future. To help him deal with this struggle, the team set about getting him wasted on cheap vodka. He'd resisted their advances at first but several hours later he wast trying to play recorder on a bit of tree-branch while Richard laughed hysterically, bent double over his fluorescent bike.

“Morons. That's what I've been given.” Jeremy muttered to himself.

“It _doesn't!_ ” Richard cried, in response to May's insistence that the vodka had a terrible _terroir._ “It's just white spirit – straight up distilled mayhem. Rocket fuel doesn't have a flavour and neither does this.”

“Yes it _does!_ ” May replied, with just as much fervour. “Look at the bottle,” he continued to ramble aimlessly about the mostly drunk lemon vodka. “You can see very clearly that it's been infused with a chemical that at once stage in its life claimed to be a lemon. That is a flavour – that is a note of not-so-subtle character -”

Jeremy interrupted them with his enormous arm outstretched in May's direction. “No, I'm sorry, May. Whatever colour the little label on that bottle may be and any pictures that they've displayed of fruit are all entirely wrong. That lemon was made in a lab to a formula known as, 'something a bit like citrus.'”

“Well – that may be,” May was forced to admit. The fine print on the back should've been a clue – it listed off an extensive list of chemical concentrations but not a lot about – well – lemons.

“That to me is just pure alcohol with a lemon held over the bottle for a few seconds. It is rubbish. Utter shit and May – I'm surprised at you for drinking it.” Richard was shouting again for no reason.

“I'm not drinking it – I'm tasting it.” May stumbled over and decided to stay on the floor and taste the vodka some more.

“Give me strength,” muttered Clarkson, rubbing his aching forehead as he turned away from the disastrous scene, “give me – Andy!”

Andy loomed in front of Clarkson, arms folded – stock standard _Andy look of disapproval_ in place.

“I didn't do – any of this!” Clarkson said hurriedly, gesturing at the mess of co-presenters behind him.

“TV show...”

God. Clarkson was too hung over for a cryptic producer. “...yes?”

“This is not a documentary on three old drunks in the jungle. It's a thinly-veiled adventure comedy masked as a car show. Do you need it written on your forehead?”

“...how would I read it if it's on my-”

Andy only had to lean forward ominously for Jeremy to stop speaking and nod.

*~*~*

“Jeremy – get out of the Range Rover.”

The presenter was too long for the back seat of the Range Rover. When the door was pulled open, his legs flopped out, hanging over the edge for a moment before the sleeping presenter curled up, tucking them awkwardly into the safety of the car.

The logistical challenge of removing a presenter from a support car was not something usually covered in the briefing notes. Especially not one that easily stretched over six foot. Even from here, Andy could see Jeremy's hands curled around the edge of the seat like a sloth gripping a branch. They were going to have to bribe him out.

“Someone go find coffee.”

There was no such problem with James May. The very green man was strewn over the forest floor, arms and legs out like a starfish. He hadn't been eaten during the night, presumably because of the average decibel count from his snoring. Someone had sprayed a green 'line of chalk' around his body during the night – probably filmed it.

“Very funny...” he muttered at the waiting camera.

Hammond was the only one that made it into a tent. They knew it was his because he'd surrounded it with bug-zapping lights (which had all broken from overuse during the night) and an unhealthy amount of tarpaulin presumably so that he could see any snakes or spiders that tried to get to his tent during the night. To be honest, it would have been a lot better not knowing for he was greeted with a magnificent array of jungle creatures of death.

The entire camp was a rats nest of horror. Like a college dorm their possessions were tangled over the forest floor and every single thing that they owned needed to be neatly packed into the support vehicles. It was one of those mornings where Andy thought _fuck it_ and retired to the camp fire while the teenagers cleaned up. He was eventually joined by three very rough looking presenters, nursing cups of coffee.

“More health and safety manuals?” Asked Richard, looking at the fire raging inside the oil drum.

*~*~*

Nobody was more surprised that Jeremy Clarkson when the 'find my phone' app actually produced a result. From the depths of the jungle they emerged, led by Explorer Clarkson and in front of them was the neat bundle of tents belonging to the BBC.

“Aw no...” Hammond whispered to May, as they crawled up the bit of scrub behind the ape. “We'll never ever ever hear the end of this now that he's done something useful.”

“Bollocks!” May agreed. “I told you we should have turned off the GPS function so this couldn't happen.”

“Too late now – we're going to be killed by staff from the BBC during what will probably the worst planned phone rescue mission ever mounted.”

“Maybe but you know something else that might cheer you up?”

“What?”

“There's no ruins nearby – those buggers haven't found jack shit of square sod all.”

That was definitely true. The BBC had made camp in a bit of rubbish jungle that was no more interesting than any other insect-infected area. They were shooting links – lots of rambling and a few choice close up of their presenters – who were all polished within an inch of their lives. They certainly didn't look like they'd survived a week of torturous hell. And none of them were bright green.

“Clarkson – Clarkson!” May gripped onto the back of Jeremy's shirt and pulled him back into the protective cover of the trees after he started off in the direction of the BBC. “What the bloody hell are you doing?”

“...uh – retrieving my phone,” he replied, as though it were the most obvious thing ever said by anyone.

“You daft moron,” May grumbled, while Hammond reached up and helped pull the enormous man back into the safety of the cover. “It can't be you. They will see you coming several million miles off like a bloody comet approaching the sun with a huge tail of debris behind you.”

Jeremy frowned. “I can' sneak – I'm good at sneaking!”

“Perhaps when you were five years old and more hair than sense.”

“That cuts deep, May.”

“Why – why is everyone looking at me?” Hammond narrowed his eyes at the others after a protracted silence and many suspicious looks in his direction. “Is it because I'm _small_? It's because I'm small. I hate both of you with a fiery vengeance that will last well into the next season.”

“But you'll do it?” May prompted.

“Obviously.”

*~*~*

“ _Richard – what's the hold up, mate?”_

The radio strapped to Richard's hip crackled into life, making him yelp and duck behind the nearest hedge of death. _“What?”_ He growled angrily at the interruption.

“ _Well – what are you doing? You're only half way down the hill.”_

“ _Jeremy – I'm sneaking. Sneaking takes time. Get off the radio!”_

Jeremy looked to James and shrugged, putting down the radio. Technically, James snatched the radio off him and put it at a safe distance. “He's doing fine,” James insisted.

“He spends more time at the BBC than me – they'll recognise him straight away! He's got a hamster wheel installed in their front office and everything.”

“No they won't and no, he doesn't,” May assured him. “He's always off doing inoffensive documentaries. Do you really think this over-funded sink hole faction of the BBC has ever seen them?”

Jeremy nodded slowly. They were over-funded but he couldn't stop the edges of a grin curling the corner of his lip. That money was going to dry up soon. It was printed by the _Top Gear_ presses and those had come to a grinding halt.


	20. The Belly of the Beast

“I don't want to be green any more,” May complained bitterly.

Jeremy gave his best impression of concern. “Spray paint doesn't really come off. It gets right in the skin, deep in the pores.” He mimed his words, rubbing his own stringy arm. “Hey – we could try painting you a different colour if you're tired of green. Jeff's got some more in the back of the Range-y.”

“Jeremy – promise me something.” May said, quite seriously.

“Anything.”

“Don't help.”

Jeremy feigned considerable hurt when he noticed something interesting going on down below. “Oh wait – isn't that Hammond – on top of that overpriced BBC van?”

“Blimey...” May whispered, leaning in over Jeremy's shoulder like a bedraggled devil. Hammond was indeed _on top_ of the van with barely enough traction to stay there. “That's not going to end well – _what the hell are you doing?_ ” May batted Jeremy's hand away from the radio. “Don't call him – he'll fall off!”

“He must have webbed hands or something,” Jeremy mused, watching as Hammond came down gently off the van exactly where the boxes that contained Jeremy's phone should be. “He might actually get away with this.”

The film crew appeared to agree – perching in various locations with long lenses. May wouldn't be surprised if they played _Mission Impossible_ music over this segment.

“What's he doing?” Jeremy demanded, after Hammond successfully retrieved Jeremy's phone, slipping it into one of the infuriating pockets that his 'survivor' pants came with. He'd made a left, creeping around the side of the van to a table with various laptops and paperwork scattered over it.

“Maps,” James whispered. “He's damn well going for the maps the stupid git.”

“He's going to get caught!”

“There – there – look! One of the coffee slaves is coming back to their desk,” Jeremy pointed out the sleepy human zombie slowly trundling toward the van where Hammond was ratting around.

“If we radio him – the noise will give him away,” James insisted sensibly, keeping Jeremy off the radio with a forceful shove.

“Well have you got a better idea?”

The 'better idea' involved throwing stones at the BBC crewman, drawing his attention away long enough for Hammond to leg it back up the hill. Amazingly they got away with it – which seemed to really annoy Andy.

“I've done the math on this,” Andy said to a camera later, no doubt for one of his behind the scenes editions, “and the average age of our presenters is about four and a half.”

The runt of the litter scampered up the lightly-jungled hill, diving dramatically over the embankment with maps in hand and gleeful, hamster grin.

“You didn't...”

“Oh _I did_!” Hammond replied, thrusting a handful of useful stolen data at May. Before he could turn around, Jeremy had already extracted his phone from Hammond's back pocket and put it safely in his own jeans – though not before eyeing a humorously vengeful message from Piers.

“Can we _please_ vacate the area before we're spotted by BBC staff?” Andy insisted, ushering them toward the bikes. “I know it's all fun and good television for you three but I'm the one who'll wind up with all the paperwork on my desk. Six feet of it over that bridge thing. No more bridges.”

“Andy – _Andy_...” Jeremy insisted annoyingly. “It's not TV any more.”

Solely for that, Jeremy was given the most inexplicably difficult scripts for the rest of the day which he muddled through while the others laughed their asses off. By the end of it, Jeremy knew far too much about the biodiversity of the forest. He could make any common greenie blush! Except James, of course. Who was in a foul mood.

“Just – _stop!_ ” James snatched a particularly bad script off the ape when he couldn't endure the pronunciation massacre any more. “Half the things you've said in the last ten minutes aren't even real words.”

Hammond, meanwhile, had laughed so much that he was now tilted awkwardly to the side, clutching his lung which he was certain had collapsed at some point.

They were all a fair way downstream. The muddy track that was giving them hell earlier had become a fully fledged river with the most serious infestation of sharp vine-thingys that they'd ever seen. Jeremy held up a particularly morbid example, pointing at the thorn which had more in common with a nail. James was currently trying to pronounce the scientific name of it but wasn't doing any better at it than Jeremy.

“If any one mentions the word 'raft' I am baiting them on the end of a fishing rod and catching supper,” Jeremy insisted.

“Don't be daft,” Richard replied. “We're on the right side of the river. Why would we want to cross it?”

“Comedy,” was his gruff response. Thankfully the producers thought it would be even funnier to make them find the lost city.

_'Congratulations, you are all thieves.'_ Read the next arrow that missed Hammond's head by inches. He continued to read its contents aloud.  _'With the intelligence you've gathered you should be able to find more than a buried temple.'_

May took exception to that. “I'd like to point out that we found a totally undiscovered piece of human history and -”

May was silenced by Hammond's hand over his mouth so that he could keep reading. _'You will build a boat.'_

The camp was instantly filled with the wailing of three middle-aged presenters.

*~*~*

“You're not green!” Hammond exclaimed, much much later.

James was bent over an engine, pulling the thing apart in a rather meticulous way that was guaranteed to take a ten thousand years. He was infuriating to watch but he certainly wasn't green. “Well observed.”

“MAY!” Jeremy whacked him affectionately on the back before hugging him against his will. May tried valiantly to fend him off but when the orangutan wanted love, he generally got it. “You're gonna kill that bike with love.”

Finally free, May brandished a screwdriver at Clarkson, threatening him to back off. “Help or sod off... Wait- where's Hammond's bike?”

“About Hammond's bike...” Clarkson started – and Hammond looked down sheepishly. “He's gone and hidden it.”

“What – why?”

“Bloody named it, hasn't he?” Jeremy shrugged. “He doesn't want to cannibalise it for parts for this boat thing.”

Richard Hammond was trying not to sulk. “I like my bike.”

“You're going to like it even more as a boat.” May insisted, standing up and advancing on the small man. “Where is it, then?”

“Nowhere...” Hammond replied.

“Hammond – it's part of the blueprints for the boat. I'm going to respectfully request that you surrender your bike.”

“Or?”

“Or Jeremy will hang you upside down from that tree until you give in.”

Richard looked between Jeremy and the tree. “I-”

*~*~*

It wasn't so bad, really. He had a reasonable view – was mostly safe from the creatures of the jungle that wanted to eat him – and at the present, had front row seats to the saga of Jeremy and James hunting for his bike. Every now and then he shouted unhelpful instructions like, _'warm!' 'cold!'_ at them to throw them off the scent. The fact that he was hanging upside down from a tree didn't bother him so much.

Eventually the two muppets found the bike and dragged it out from a fern to the tune of a wailing hamster. May rubbed his hands together eagerly and started dismembering it. Jeremy cracked open a beer and wandered over to Richard.

“I hate you.” Richard said, swinging on the rope.

“Beer, mate?” Jeremy asked.

“Yeah – mate.”


	21. Boatbike

**Chapter 21: Boatbike**

The boat was rad. No wait, Jeremy panicked, _rad_ was an old word now. Cool. It was _cool_.

“Epic!” Richard squatted down in front of the boatbike. Sometimes he had to hand it to May, despite all his irritating rituals and (let's face it) endless cleaning of tools he has absolutely no intention of using, he could actually build things when left alone. Sure – the crew pitched in but this one was _all_ May.

May was wiping oil off his hands, nodding proudly at his creation. “I know,” he replied, smugly.

“But does it actually float?” Jeremy frowned slightly at the unwieldy thing. It looked amazing – immaculate and yes, like a boat but... “You don't have the best track record when it comes to keeping things above the water line,” he added.

“Apart from his spaniel head.”

“Of course it'll float!” May insisted. “If you buggers help me drag it down to the river, I'll show you.”

“I've got a bad back...” Jeremy reached behind and held his hip, pretending he was in sudden pain.

“That's your hip, you miserable drunk. Take that end over there.” James directed the both to grip onto bits of the boatbike that looked reasonably solid. It only wobbled a little. “Careful of the trees!” James hissed at them, when Richard collided with one, his body serving as an airbag for the boat.

“Yeah – no – I'm all right – thanks for asking.”

When they reached the river and set down their boatbike, May's heart rate jumped up a few percentage points. It was one thing to know that your boatbike would float in a controlled environment. It was another entirely to know that it would survive a wide expanse of carnivore infested jungle river. _Death River_ as Jeremy had christened it early with half a bottle of beer. The wind kicking over the surface gave it the appearance of waves.

“Problem?” Jeremy sidled up to May, whispering discreetly.

“No. No problem.” May lied. He was frowning. “Do you still have those maps? I uh – just want to make absolutely certain that we're supposed to be on that side of the river. It'll be rather hard to come back against the current if we change our minds at a later date.”

May knew for a fact that they'd be crossing the river when boats suddenly materialised out of thin air for the rest of the crew. Indeed, they were sending their equipment over in lovely, stable looking barges while the camera guys got to ride in the backs of attractive speed boats. The boatbike looked exceedingly cool but when push came to shove, the chances of it sinking and all of them either drowning or being eaten was realistically quite high.

“Actually, I'm not entirely sure about this...” May said later, twiddling his thumbs, staring at the water from an uncomfortable rock.

Hammond and Jeremy sat either side of him. They were all having a farewell beer in case this really was the end of their lives. It was tradition before any advantageous water crossings.

“The water looks in better nick than the Cock River...” Jeremy pointed out. “We drank half a pint of that and lived.”

“We ate at your place and lived...” Hammond cruelly replied to Jeremy.

“Of all three of us – I'm the best chef. Fact.”

“That – mate – is not saying much,” Hammond assured him.

*~*~*

As soon as all the appropriate cameras were in place to catch their deaths in high definition, two of them boarded the boatbike. It consisted of a raft-like base with both bikes partially de-constructed and mounted on top as a form of propulsion and steering. May stole the idea from their Vietnam tour only this time the raft wasn't electrified.

“Looking good – looking good...” Clarkson said, turning the handlebars as May pushed the raft off from the bank. “Oy – you're meant to be on it, you idiot!” he shouted, when May let the boatbike drift a little too far away from the bank.

May chased the boatbike along the river, slightly alarmed by how fast it was picking up speed. He'd never made anything fast in his life.

“Just jump!” Hammond waved him on. “Come on! Hurry up.”

“Bloody hell!” May grumbled, vaulting a pile of rocks in his pursuit of the vessel.

“This isn't going to end well...” Jeremy bit his lip as May took a running leap toward the boatbike – arms outstretched – flailing wildly in the air. “Oh my god!!!”

May hit the raft. It lurched wildly from side to side, throwing water all over the place. Hammond threw himself at the floor, clinging onto the raft for dear left. Clarkson, oddly, reached for May, grabbing the back of his shirt before he was able to tumble off into the angry water.

“Where do you think you're going?” Clarkson rolled his eyes, hauling May into the middle of the boatbike.

“Don't touch me.” May grumbled automatically. He winked at the same time though so Jeremy figured he was pleased about the rescue. “It floats. I'd like to point that out.”

“Uh – guys...”

They both turned to Richard. “What now?” May muttered.

“I think we're gonna...”

Too late. The boatbike snagged on a fallen tree half submerged along the edge of the river in the long grass. It was almost perfectly distanced from the bank so that anyone might easily step on board.

“May, why did you leap on here like an idiot when you could've just -”

“Clarkson?”

“What...?”

“Don't speak,” May advised.

*~*~*

Open water. It was terrifying (though not as terrifying as James May holding a map up to the light).

“What – exactly – are we looking for?” Richard asked again. “'cause all I'm seeing is more and more jungle. Lots of jungle. More jungle...”

“Some kind of stone markings like the ones from the forest – only larger,” May frowned at his map. “They should be somewhere up ahead. We really need to get closer to the other side of this river to get a better look. Jeremy!”

“What?” Jeremy was seated on the remains of the other bike opposite James. They had to rev both engines separately in order to make the boatbike work. Of course, the engines were not the same size so creating power imbalances allowed them to steer in a very haphazard manner.

“Are you actually driving over there or waving at the camera crew?”

“One of them is _very_ pretty,” Jeremy insisted.

“Hammond, remind me why you're not back here driving with me?”

“Because that would leave Jeremy navigating...”

James considered this. “Right.” It was, however, annoying that Jeremy really did have a point about the camerawoman – she was _very_ pretty.

“Stones!” Richard bounced on the spot like a small rodent making the boatbike unstable, rocking back and forward. Water splashed over the edges and onto Jeremy's feet.

“Oy! Stop that!” Jeremy gripped the handlebars in fright. “If you calm down we're turn and go over there – keep your bloody tail on man.”

“Stones!” Richard repeated unhelpfully.

“We're going to edit all this out...” Jeremy muttered under his breath. Oh well, at least May was a normal colour again and they hadn't been eaten by a river dwelling creature. What they were doing, however, was heading toward the other bank too fast and too sharp. “Where did you learn to steer?”

“Jezza, it's _your_ engine that's on too hard,” May replied flatly. “And judging by the way the camera crew are inching in closer, they expect us to have some kind of horrific accident soon.” They were usually right.

No one was sure whose idea it was... One and a half hours passed in which no one was prepared to own it. They'd managed to wedge their boatbike near the bank where the stone pillars leaned awkwardly out from the river mud but there was no way for them to make it ashore over the forest of razor sharp river grass and silt. They had to get the boatbike closer to the shore.

Hence Richard swinging a rope five times his size over his head in a wayward attempt to lasso the stone. So far the only thing he'd caught was Jeremy – twice – and he was getting cranky.

“The stone is _that way_ you idiot!” Jeremy untangled himself for a third time. “You're about three feet too short for this. Give it to me!” He wrestled it off the hamster. “Right now – be prepared for true mastery.”

James and Richard shared a wary glance. This could only end poorly.

“Oh ye of little faith!” Jeremy hollared as he spun the rope over his head and let fly. Fly it did – straight over the top of the nearest stone with real precision.

“That's annoying...” Richard winced as the boat was heaved toward the bank. They had to move into the middle of the boatbike to avoid the nasty grass that encroached in their space. “Careful Jeremy.”

“Relax...” Jeremy heaved on the rope again, dragging the boatbike and its occupants right up onto the solid part of the bank. He wasn't sure if it was quite proper to use an ancient, sacred relic as a moor point but... “Welcome gentlemen, to plot point 21A 17J.”

“What about the boatbike?” May looked back at his creation as they scrambled ashore.

“It's not going anywhere,” Jeremy promised.

James still gave it a fond pet on his way out. There was no chance for vehicles in this part of the forest. It was dense and weed-ridden, not like the pristine mess they'd left behind. Odd, James thought. An abundance of weeds usually indicated overgrown ruins. It was a simple biological fact that weeds were the first to retake the world from human settlement and it took a long time for the rest of the jungle to kill them off.

“I think we might be on the right track,” James mumbled, deciding bravely to take the lead. He unsheathed his mostly-blunt machete and started hacking away at the five-foot grass in front of him. The grass fought back. James landed arse first in silt. “Cock.”

**5 MONTHS PRIOR**

**CLARKSON'S UNIT**

 

“God mate, it really is a small corner of the world.” Hammond said, stepping over several columns of books that had grown out of the floor. Clarkson's pad was about as welcoming as a college student's dorm – smelled like it too with the abandoned booze bottles, ash trays and faint hue of yesterday's pizza. “All the money you have – why don't you hire a maid or something?”

“And have them sniff around all my stuff, sell off a few things to the Daily Mail? I think not...” Clarkson finally found the blind cord and gave it a tug, letting in some light.

“Open the window...” James added.

Clarkson did, letting in the groan of London with it. “Not so bad. Beer?' There was a general nod of agreement.

“These are scripts for the new show?” Hammond picked through some of the paper.

“Put those down...”

“Alright moody...” Hammond set them back on the floor. “Why'd you bring us back here?”

“So that we could talk without half the paps in town listening in.”

“I'm sure they've bugged your apartment by now.”

“James,” Hammond frowned, “that's not helpful, is it? Just drink your beer.”

James acquiesced by lifting the cold beer to his lips for a swig. They all took up seats wherever they could find them. Richard, being the smallest and least likely to put up a fight ended up on the floor with a couple of cushions. It was a good half an hour before any of them found the will to speak. Naturally, it was Clarkson.

“We're mad, aren't we?” he said, between mouthfuls of cold beer.

“Twenty years and you're working that out now? You're not a fast learner, are you?” May replied.

“You know what I mean.”

Richard shrugged. “Ambitious but rubbish...”

“On balance I'd say we were more lucky idiots.” James set his beer down. “You know the really mad thing? I think it'll work and if it doesn't, we can always start up that bar we keep threatening the English population with.”

“If you do, I'm _not_ coming there for food,” Richard laughed. “Dreadful cooks – the pair of you.”

“Nah it'll be fine. We'll make sure we have some rice crisps for you and everything,” Jeremy insisted, holding his bottle up.

Richard knocked his against it in cheers. “Right then, maybe I'll stop by – if it comes to that.”

James and Jeremy smiled a little more fondly at each other than they should. Although it was always meant as a joke – entirely fictional, the idea that they might run some pokey bar in the middle of nowhere was gaining appeal as they grew in years. There were some days where he thought of it quite earnestly and he knew that Jeremy did too. James didn't have the faintest idea what that meant.

“Was there actually a point to us being here or were you lonely 'cause if you were lonely we could've come back to mine where there are proper deck chairs and a view,” Richard fussed wish his lone cushion.

“Also small children and about fifteen dogs,” Jeremy pointed out.

“You like my dogs!”

“ _Topgear_ , I like her. The rest try to maul me to death on approach.”

“With love.” Richard's dogs were the most ridiculously friendly things on the face of the earth.

“Clarkson – you ordering us food?” James knew that there was absolutely nothing to eat in the house.

*~*~*

James May made it home late in the evening – nearly morning if the faint glow behind the buildings was anything to go by. He disturbed a bird hiding in the ridiculous bit of shrubbery next to his door, muttered something about keyholes being unnecessarily tiny and then stumbled inside. The lights were off which meant his long-suffering girlfriend was working her way through the art house bars surrounded by creatures of the theatre and dance world. James had always considered them to be a different species. Every time that he went out with them he worried he'd end up the centre piece of a production.

He didn't bother with the lights. With one hand on the wall, he wandered down the narrow hall and into the living room where he collapsed into the couch. _Top Gear_ lined the DVD shelf either side of the TV. James eyed the DVDs wistfully. Those few plastic cases represented a terrifying portion of his life. Sure, there was another shelf of Man Lab, Toy Stories, documentaries and spin offs but there was no denying it – _Top Gear_ was cemented in his soul.

The corner of his lip curled up in a smile. He needed another drink.


	22. Idiots Abroad

“CLARKSON, YOU IDIOT!”

Which was immediately followed by an even more desperate, retaliatory, _“MAY, YOU IDIOT!_ ” from the orang-utan.

Despite being utterly caked in mud, May managed to look innocent. “What are you blathering on about – I had nothing to do with this!”

“Which is why you're up to your knees in Amazonian dolphin shit!”

“ _This_ is almost certainly not the Amazon rainforest,” May countered, ignoring the tone Jeremy had chosen to take with him. “And if dolphins have taken to shitting on land then there are more substantial problems afoot than a bit of mud in your knickers -”

“Ohmigod...” Hammond untangled himself from an overly friendly vine. It had wound itself up his arm and was making a break for his neck before he tugged it away. “Could you just – not banter for a moment... I have bits of tree sticking out of my arse crack and billions of insects with fangs embedded in my flesh. I just – need a halo of silence while I deal with this.”

“Cone.”

“I beg your pardon?” Richard frowned at Jeremy.

“Cone of Silence – not a halo. A halo is one of those daft things from Renaissance frescos.”

A nerve between May's eyebrows twinged, dragging his forehead into a frown. “ _Please_ don't sully art history with your limited opinions.”

“Can we focus on the more pressing issue of Triffids?”

“Don't _you_ start with literature!” Clarkson rolled his eyes dramatically at the overgrown hamster before begrudgingly lending a hand – well _paw_. A muddy one at that. By the time he was finished 'helping' Hammond looked like he'd been mauled by a bear.

“Thank you – I think,” Hammond said, standing on an outcrop of rock. He gazed over their surrounds. “This really is the shittest tomb raiding adventure ever,” he added in dismay, eyeing the overgrown bank with its nest of weeds and suspiciously dangerous expanses of silt. The Boatbike was moored to what they presumed was another priceless stone marker. Already it had an alarming list going on with one corner dipping under the water. “Where are the amazing vistas – the stunning waterfalls and buried hoards of treasure?”

“Hammond – don't be so rueful.” May was awkwardly hopping over grassy outcrops, heading for his beloved Boatbike.

“The hell are you going?”

May replied by pointing at an arrow sticking out of their raft. There was an ominous envelope tied to its body, flapping in the breeze.

“Bloody hell. Why can't they deliver these things in bottles of beer instead of arrows of death?”

*~*~*

“This is a motoring show.”

May and Hammond exchanged looks as they trailed behind Clarkson.

“So _why_ ,” Clarkson continued, huffing as he was hit in the face by some winged creature of the underworld, “are we _carrying_ the remnants of our motor-vehicle? If this is a motor show then Hammond's a world champion wrestler and you're Britain's next top model.”

“Might be,” May replied, shifting the rather heavy innards of the Boatbike higher onto his shoulder. “Silverfox is _in_ right now.”

“And where is this bloody clearing anyway?” Clarkson continued moaning. “All I see is more rubbish looking weed-hedges with – _Jesus_!” He sidestepped away from an enormous spider that had make a web-city beside them. “With _things like that_ living in it.”

“We have to do what the envelope says,” Hammond replied, bringing up the rear. “You know what happens if we don't obey the challenges.”

Clarkson paused. Well actually – he'd never stopped to think what might happen if he didn't do as he was told.

“You'll have to pay for that new sports car of yours...” Hammond helped.

“That was May, you moron!”

“Yeah – I was blackmailed into this adventure by poverty,” May affirmed. “Instead of worrying about the clearing, we should be thinking about how the hell we're going to turn this Boatbike corpse back into an actual bike. I'm having my doubts that it's going to go back together into something resembling a bike.”

Clarkson stopped to catch his breath. The sun was out again and its uninterrupted presence made the jungle heat unbearable. He was dripping so much sweat around him he was practically a portable rain cloud. Somewhere behind them, he could hear the crew struggling after them with machetes and Range Rovers. They were really suffering in this terrain but he couldn't find any pity for them.

“Did you see something?” May asked, when Clarkson stopped them.

“Only my lungs on the path in front.”

May smirked. “Well just step over it, man.”

“Have we started going uphill?”

“Jeremy, _everything_ is uphill with you.”

“No, _Hammond you moron_ ,” Clarkson replied, wiping away a thick veneer of sweat from his head. “This is definitely up. Look!” He dropped his empty water bottle on the ground to prove a point. After a lazy, inert moment it tipped to the side and began to roll away from him. “Ah ha! See...”

Hammond wasn't particularly moved. “It's not exactly powering off.”

The Hamster lived to regret those words. Twenty more minutes enduring the scrappy jungle and even he had to admit that they were involved in a hill climb. “You know what I'm not seeing a lot of?” he began, panting. His favourite (once American looking) cowboy hat looked particularly sad with a real sag toward the left. He claimed it was from Jeremy closing a boot on it but it was more likely caused by being folded in half inside his luggage. “Clearings... We're still carrying the carcass of our bikes through jungle. Why don't we just make a bloody clearing – you've got the machete!”

“It's _blunt!_ ” Jeremy stabbed a nearby tree to prove his point.

“Another stone thingy,” May pointed out boredly, as they meandered along.

“Starting to get a bit creeped out by the stones, if I'm honest.”

“If I were you,” May replied, shifting the heavy Boatbike innards higher onto his shoulder, “I'd be more worried about the snake on your hat.”

*~*~*

Several hours of screaming later, they reached their clearing - otherwise known as the crest of a mountain.

They were officially dead, dropping their cargo onto the rock before collapsing beside, sprawled in the sun.

“Take me, universe...” Clarkson cried dramatically.

“You look like an albatross that's flown into an iceberg.”

“Bugger off, May.”

“Aaaand that's perfect!” Andy snapped his fingers, signalling to the cameramen that they could wrap for a moment. “All right you lot, peel yourselves off the ground and come grab a drink.”

“Can't. Dead.”

“Jeremy, there are no cameras and no bonus points for drama.”

“This isn't acting! This is me, actually being dead.”

“Noisiest corpse I've ever seen. If you want to feel sorry for someone it should be the poor interns that carried all your shit up the pyramid.”

“The – wha?” Jeremy sat up suddenly, eyebrow arching at his producer.

“Mountain. The mountain.” Andy quickly amended.

“You said 'pyramid'.”

“That's a kind of mountain.”

“Andy...”

“Jeremy...”

“Andy...”

“Ow! What the – who threw that?” Jeremy reeled around, searching for the culprit. He'd been hit in the back by a warm can of beer. His frowned deeper when he saw that, as requested, another challenge was taped to the body of the beer can. “Ah ha ha...” he fake-laughed. “Very funny. I'll have the arrows in future.” A least those weren't aimed at his body. Clarkson's nest of eyebrows wove into a stoic look of concern.

“Can't be that bad, mate?” Hammond hoped rather than believed as he watched Jeremy read the new message.

Jeremy cleared his throat and read aloud, _'You won't be needing your bikes from this point forward.'_

“Sodding _what now?_ ” hissed May, which was swiftly followed by an extended series of _beeps_ over whatever Hammond had just added.

_'Pay attention. You are not standing on a hill.'_ Jeremy turned the paper over, looking for more of the message but there was nothing else. “Eh?”

May was turning on the spot, paying closer attention to his surrounds. The note was  _right_ . As he looked about there weren't any other mountains or hills. At this point, they were well above the totally shit looking jungle that they'd been trekking through and yes, he could even see the river winding around, gleaming in the odd reflection of sunlight. Actually, their hill was a bit odd looking itself. Unnatural. Squarish at the bottom.

“Pyramid...” Jeremy sighed, kicking the remnants of the Boatbike.

“Ruin!” Hammond discovered that some of the rock beneath them was actually of the carved variety.

“Hole...” May finished, kneeling beside a large crack between two large stone blocks. It was big enough to fit in – if you felt like getting hot and heavy with a nest of spiders. Which he didn't. James fished about in his backpack, pulled out a torch and shone it down the hall. There wasn't much to look at – more tunnel. Rock. Eerie darkness. “Has anyone actually been down there and lived?” He opened the question to the floor. The crew returned blank stares. Even Andy kept quiet. “Brilliant.”

“I'm not going to fit down there,” Jeremy shook his head. “I'm just _not_.”

*~*~*

A nine foot orang-utan stuck between two endless walls of stone like a reasonably-priced presenter sandwich made excellent T.V. Clarkson, meanwhile, was busy examining his life choices. He was struggling to understand how he'd gone from car journalist to Bear Grylls. He strongly suspected the involvement of rohynol-flavoured beer. 

“Oh _fuck_ heads up!” he screeched, as his torch slipped from his hand and tumbled through the gaps between his shoulder, back and legs. It hit several things below, all of which swore and made nasty comments in his general direction. All he had now was the torch strapped to his forehead. He was going to kill whomever thought these things were a good idea. All they did was serve to make the insects closest to his nose enormous while leaving everything else a gaping void of nothing.

“Get your _foot_ off of my _shoulder_ ,” an unimpressed Hammond squeaked below.

“The crew are _not_ going to follow us down here,” May observed. He was the deepest in, taking the lead mostly because he was pushed by the other two. Literally pushed. Mind you it wasn't the first time they'd ganged up and tried to kill him for the general amusement of common man. “And if they're waiting at the bottom with all their cameras having walked in through a nice passageway I'm going to disembowel our wonderful produce live on screen.”

“I'll join you,” Hammond agreed.

_'Can still hear you...'_ Andy's voice crackled over the radio.

“Look on the bright side,” Richard continued. “At least we didn't fall into this one. May...”

“What?”

“What's sticking into my leg...”

May may have been below the hamster but they still ended up tangled from time to time. It's not like any of them were proficient in caving. “Ah... nothing.”

Another silence, this one longer with Clarkson listening intently.

“Is that the number plate off the Boatbike?”

“...no comment.”

“You are officially a knob.”

“How's Oliver?” May retaliated. “Do you visit him? Does he get lonely out in that shed of yours? Rusting away, singing himself to sleep. _All by myself... Don' wanna be_ -”

“May,” Clarkson interrupted. “It's poor form to speak ill of the dead.”

“Oliver is not dead!” Hammond bleated. “ _Bleep_ you and your _bleeping bleep_ of a _bleep_ hair that _bleeps_ the _bleep_ you massive _bleeping bleep_!”

“Congratulations Hammond,” Clarkson laughed. “You've managed to insult three continents and two minority groups in one sentence. Oh God – my arm's stuck in a hole!”

“Jeremy, your whole body is stuck in a hole,” Hammond muttered. “Can you please stop dislodging bits of cave onto my head?”

“Hammond – what would you rather fall onto your head, bits of crushed cave insect or _me_?”

“Yeah, I hadn't really thought that one through.”

“Exactly. Now stop messing about and hurry up. My limbs are killing me and I can't see anything but an orb of light reflecting off my nose.”


	23. Amateur Hour

_Flick-flick. Flick. Flick-flick-flick._

“What, Hammond, are you doing?” May asked, standing in the pitch black somewhere nearby.

“Lighting a torch.”

_Flick-flick_ .

“With your five pound zippo? I don't think fire is a good idea in a confined-”

_Flick._

_Whoooooooosh!_

“Jesus man!” James shouted, as his sleeve caught alight. A flame rushed up the highly flammable material and for a brief moment James May was the world's fastest man. Hammond tackled him to the ground and poured half a bottle of water over him. Everything went dark again.

“ _What's going on down there?”_ A disembodied voice came from the shaft above where Jeremy remained stuck. _“I can smell damp charcoal.”_

May shoved the rodent off and switched on his proper battery powered torch – you know, like a sane, modern explorer. “You know how that Darwin chap was always going on about mankind being a perfect example of millions of years of tiny improvements to the human genome?”

“Yeah...” Hammond found his head-light and turned it on.

“He wasn't referring to you.”

“ _Can you lot hurry up? I'm tired of being stuck between jaws of granite!”_

“You're not stuck you're just – _lodged_.” Hammond tried to soften the blow but it did little to stem the torrent of un-broadcastable abuse coming from above. Forget about the quaint _beeps_ , Netflix was going to have to burn the whole bloody tape and dub over with bird noises.

Neither Richard nor May were confident that this was the proper entrance to the rumoured pyramid nor were they entirely convinced that the operational health and safety narks had signed off on their little adventure into the centre of some random mountain. It had all been a bit too  _Indiana Jones and the Hole of Death_ for their liking. For Clarkson, it was full-blown HBO.

“ _Oh_ thank you _, that's fine then!”_ Clarkson ranted from his awkward position. He'd nearly made it except for his shoulders which were apparently wider than the last bits of rock before the final drop. The presenter was wriggling around as much as he could but short of coating himself in Vaseline he wasn't sure how he was going to get out of this.

Or how they were going to get back up.

No.

Best not to think that at all.

“ _I will not die a skeleton dangling over you two. I just won't.”_

“Please – stop doing that...” May frowned at the legs protruding from the cave roof. They were kicking wildly like a frog in a vivisection. “It's just _wrong_.”

“ _I'm not exactly thrilled about being stuck in a pyramid's rectum either!”_ Clarkson shouted back. _“Can't you lot of useless plonkers give me a hand?”_

“Uh...”

“ _Just – grab a foot each and tug!”_

May and Hammond shared looks of disapproval. Everything they did would be giffed, iconned and turned into three minutes videos with bad 90's, vaguely homo-erotic dance music but seeing as the conversation wasn't getting any better and they couldn't exactly leave him hanging, they reluctantly latched onto Clarkson's sneakers and started to pull – an action that was soon followed by a litany of protests from above.

“Ow – ow – ow – ow – *bleeping* – _ow_...” Clarkson muttered, as he was dragged against the abrasive rock with about as much delicacy as a chiropractor. “Ow _oh shit!_ ” he cried out, as he felt something give rather violently. All of a sudden he was free-falling – straight onto two idiots. At least they cushioned his fall.

“Bloody hell, you giant muppet!” Hammond had nearly vanished, identifiable only by a hand and leg beneath Clarkson's body. “My lungs are gonna collapse. Oh god. Get off. Everything is broken. You've broken the hamster wheel.”

“You're crushing my balls!” May kneed Clarkson in the gentleman's region to get him off.

Jeremy rolled off the ungrateful twats and immediately squeaked, finding various surfaces on his body rubbed raw by the fall. He inspected each one, grumbling at the damaged skin. “Bloody Andy and his bloody show!” He chose to ignore the fact that this entire enterprise was sort of his fault. He could have been back in his cushy studio trawling the internet for non-PC jokes but _no_... “Everything hurts. Literally all of it. I am a world of hurt. Ah – you guys...” His tone shifted immediately.

They were both licking their wounds – Hammond literally. “What is it _now_?” Hammond muttered.

“You've seen this place, right? I mean – you've been sitting in it longer than I have so you've had a chance to look it over a bit.”

“Well actually we've been rather pre-occupied trying to rescue a useless co-presenter but – _oh_.”

“Right.” James agreed with Hammond's alarm.

_Oh_ was right. The three morons hadn't fallen into your average, arachnid-infested cave with awesome looking glow-worms. No. This was absolutely, most definitely a proper pyramid. “Built by cannibals probably,” Jeremy added, in case they weren't paranoid enough as it was.

“No but chaps – is this it?” May stood up and approached one of the walls, holding up his stupid hand held camera to make sure that Andy got his shot. The wall was made out of purposely cut granite, smoothed down and fitted together in a primitive but effective dry-stack system. “Rather beautiful,” he muttered aloud. “Look at how they've ground down the hard granite. It must have taken them months for every stone. You know –”

“May,” Jeremy was standing with his hands on his hips. Well, _standing_ was probably a bit generous considering he was about two feet from being able to straighten. Instead, he and May were hunched over. Richard had no such problems. “We're in the belly of some undiscovered pyramid and you're cooing over the stone blocks.”

“Yes. And?”

“And it makes for rubbish TV. Internet. Half the audience has just flipped over to _Piratebay_.”

“Is that the show with the gay pirates?” Richard asked.

“No. Also,” Jeremy added dramatically, “there's a passageway ahead. Treasure ahoy!”

James held his head. It was throbbing from listening to Richard and Jeremy banter for too long.

“This isn't Egypt,” Hammond rolled his eyes, still squeaking about. “I think all we get here are some shrunken skulls and cave-monsters.”

“But no curses...” May helped. “Well – at least I think so. Do they have voodoo here?”

“May?”

“What?”

Jeremy nodded down towards May's feet. A crease set into May's forehead as he shone his camera (and its accompanying light) at his feet. A shriek reverberated off the walls. The camera fell from his hands and hit the friendly snake on the head, making it hiss and slither off. It tangled in May's ankles as it escaped, making him fall back onto the unforgiving stone floor.

“Cock!” he hissed, backing away from the serpent. “Stop laughing, Hammond. Snakes eat rodents.”

*~*~*

“No camera crew,” Jeremy pointed out, as they edged deeper into the tunnel. “I honestly thought that they were going to be here waiting for us with a surprise cake.”

“I'm starting to think there's a profit in our deaths. There were a lot of pages of tiny print that I didn't read. Did you?”

“With this eyesight?” Jeremy eyed May.

“Glasses...”

“You borrowed my glasses in a pub one night and never gave them back.”

“That's _not_ true.”

“Yes it -”

“I don't frequent pubs with primates.”

“I can see them in your bloody floral pocket.”

“How else do you explain this?” Hammond spun around in tiny circles, ignoring the others.

“Hammond, you are the most paranoid person I have ever come across. You probably think that your sheep are conspiring against you.”

“They are though,” Hammond insisted. “I've seen the way they stake out the barn.”

Jeremy held his head in his hand. “This – ladies, gentlemen and those of an alternate gender, is what I've been saddled with.”

“I don't know why you're bothering to talk to the camera,” Hammond continued. “We're going to die horribly and the only lifeforms that'll find our corpses are aliens in the distant future, long after humanity is kaput. No chance they'll understand what you're going on about.”

“Well actually -”

“James – if you mention anything about the life-span of video cameras, I'm going to hit you with a piece of Hammond's helmet. James? James...”

James just shrugged back. He was totally going to wait until Clarkson lost interest before lecturing the audience on silicon data integrity.

“Whoa...” Hammond pulled the group to a stop in front of wall that appeared to block the passage ahead. It wasn't like the others. This one had a single, crazy looking stone carving dug deep into it. “Isn't that one of those statue things you tied to the back of the bike? It totally is.”

“I was hoping for a BBC corpse.”

“That'll be inside,” May assured Clarkson.

“Those twats couldn't find dyke in Soho. They're probably off filming interesting birds. I've seen their 'lost city' documentaries... They're thinly veiled lectures on environmentalism – which is all well and good unless you're actually interested in ancient cultures.”

“Jeremy – there's no Viking ship under Buckingham Palace.” May looked at him sternly.

“There is!”

“Sodding nonsense...”

Hammond physically separated the fighting pair. “Oh my god we're not doing this again. Both of you shut up.”

When they were settled, Hammond faced the wall and gave it his best 'contemplative' look. He knelt down, reaching forward to tenderly press his palm against the snout of the monkey-like face on the carving. The stone was warm – weirdly so, as though it had been out in the sun all day instead of nesting in the dark. There was something strange about the rock it was made of too. It wasn't like the rest of the pyramid. Instead it reminded him of that underground bar that they'd all sworn never to mention again. “I think we're sitting above a thermal rift,” Hammond finally said.

“A thermos-what?”

May visibly twitched.

“Totally is,” Hammond continued, turning to face the others. Unfortunately May's light was pointed too high and the glare caught him straight in the eye, momentarily blinding him. The sudden brightness startled him so much that he toppled over, veering toward the wall. He hit the carving with his elbow and, as the full weight of one hamster rested on the warm stone – the nose of the carving depressed into the wall and something, deep in the pyramid, clicked.

They all heard it.

It felt like thunder.

And yet it was only quiet. One. Solid.  _Click_ .

“That – didn't sound good,” Clarkson whispered, as he tugged Richard away from the door.

They all stood staring dumbly at it. If everything went to shit it wasn't like there was much they could do. None of them were getting back up that crevice in a hurry and Clarkson – not at all. They were actually trapped down here, unless they found another way out. Properly trapped. Like – skeleton rotting against a pillar trapped. He clutched at his chest, feeling it constrict awkwardly.

“You all right, man?” May whispered.

“Gonna die...” Jeremy muttered back, clawing at his shirt.

“It's – a door...?” May was confused. _Sure_ that sound had been a bit ominous but at the end of the day, it was just a lump of rock. “We've both seen worse doors. Your office – that demonic thing that shattered twice for no reason. _That_ was properly possessed.”

“Die.”

“Jeremy?”

“No way out.”

“Hammond – we've got a problem with Jeremy.”

“Don't call me, 'Jeremy'! You _never_ call me Jeremy. Call me _pillock_ or _cock_. Ow! What'd you do that for!” He'd been smacked in the back of the head by a spaniel paw.

“Because you're a daft idiot, you idiot. Now stop panicking! If the producers wanted us dead they'd have left us on a desert island with _Genesis_ blaring from the palm trees.”

“Don't give them ideas!” Hammond freaked out, “Next it'll be, _Last Gear Standing!”_ he complained, backing further against the stone door he'd promised to stop touching. The added weight pushed whatever locking mechanism hadn't quite engaged before, all the way in and this time there was a very loud _clunk_. Hammond immediately lifted his hands. “I didn't touch anything!”

They all stopped. The only movement came from the red, flickering light on their helmet-mounted Go-Pros.

*~*~*

High above, from the safety of a Range Rover, Andy was watching the footage streamed live. It was shaky, poorly lit but credit where it was due, this made _Cloverfield_ look tame.

“Amateurs...” he muttered, sipping his coffee. “First rule of tomb raiding, _'touch nothing!'_ ”

“Another -” his aid pointed at an empty cup, indicating coffee.

Andy stretched lazily. “Yeah, why not. We could be here for a while.”

*~*~*

“ _Cocking-nora!”_ James pulled sharply away from Hammond, who was brandishing a stapler. “You just put metal in my arm!”

“Well if you held still for a moment I could do it properly.”

“No – it's fine. The shirt can stay ripped. It looks authentic. Bruce Willis-esque.”

Hammond wasn't so convinced. “At least let me staple up the bit to cover-”

“You come anywhere near me with that thing and I'll staple Clarkson's socks to your head and make you into the saddest Easter Bunny.”

“Are either of you going to help shift this rock or is it just me doing manual labour?” Jeremy shouted. He was at the door, pushing as hard as he could. It was clear that the thing had unlocked but it still required a serious amount of effort to actually shift it.

That was it for James May. “Please stop touching things!” He shouted at them. “Since we've been in this hole I've been attacked, squashed, set on fire –  _stapled_ ,” he glared pointedly at Hammond,  _“_ and prohibited from giving interesting commentary. For the next five minutes, I'm banning all activity except for breathing. That includes you, sadistic viewers, watching from your sofas. Shame on you. Go feed your cat or something.”

There was a long, awkward silence that wasn't quiet five minutes.

“James?” Clarkson ventured quietly.

James was staring intently at his watch, timing the silence. “What?”

Clarkson pointed calmly at May's helmet and said, “Spider.”

 


	24. Oh Cock

**Chapter 24: Oh Cock**

“Don't make me sigh. I spend a disturbingly large portion of my life sighing.”

“What are you complainin' about now? It's nearly shifted an' all!” Hammond insisted.

Jeremy didn't look convinced. He was holding up one of the Go-Pros to make sure that the viewers got a good look at their approaching deaths. They were curious devices – ridiculously expensive and immensely easy to misplace. Their survival rate was 47-6. No really. The film crew made them sit through a lecture about it before departing on every _single_ expedition. Despite their efforts to bore the convey into responsibility they lost more each time. It was an art. There was probably a flourishing civilisation of them at the bottom of these ruins filming every waking moment of the Earth.

“Why ain't you helping?” Hammond added irritably, sweat pouring off his forehead. May wasn't fairing much better, bearing most of the boulder's weight as the tried to shift the enormous slab of rock.

“I'm not allowed to.”

“He's not allowed to.” May agreed.

“According to May I'm _arsenic to our survival odds_.”

“No, I said you were _an arse_ ,” May corrected. Paused, then finished, “But you're not wrong. Stay over there and keep the camera pointed at us – not your muppet-shoe.”

The Go-Pro trembled a bit as Jeremy started laughing. He looked rather hilarious, hunched over in the tunnel, covered in filth with torn clothes and one shoe. “Same thing. I once tried to put up a painting and knocked clear through the wall.”

“Yeah, I remember,” Hammond grunted as he heaved the impressively heavy off-cut of rock. “It was in our new office – and it was Andy's wall.”

“Was it before or after that slight catastrophe that Andy sent us here?”

May paused. Frowned. Squinted. “After.”

Hammond sighed. “That explains why he's trying to kill us, then.”

“I don't know – your interior decorating skills probably didn't help matters...” May directed at Hammond. “Not everyone wants sheep painted on the walls.”

“What was I supposed to do with black and white paint?” Hammond moaned defensibly.

“He made us ride bikes...” Clarkson muttered. He really did hate bikes and this experience hadn't exactly warmed him to the delights of biped motoring. It was just – what was the point of half a car without a roof? The emergence of bikes had led to an alarming amount of lycra wearing in middle-aged men. “Actually, does this still count as a motoring show if we don't have our bikes?”

“We're stuck in some ancient ruin, probably soon to be killed by a curse or starvation and you're worried we've slipped outside our purview?”

“First of all, James-”

“Don't call me, 'James'...”

“ _Purview_ is a word the chums over at the BBC would use. Secondly, I've got to pass the time somehow otherwise it's just a film of you two cosying up to a rock. Any more of this and we'll have to shift genres and compete against _A Secret History_. Forget _Cash in the Attic,_ we can do _Relics in the Ruins._ Are you actually going to shift it or am I going to mummify from boredom?”

“You're going to have to let him 'ave a go...” Richard finally admitted, stepping back. “Unless you want to die listening to the soothing sounds of an orangutan flogging bits of old rock.” Clumsy and dangerous he may be but Jeremy was substantially larger than the other two and probably capable of shifting the stone door.

“Stone doors are a really stupid idea,” Clarkson muttered, when it came his turn to push up against the rock with May at his shoulder. “I mean, who honestly looks at a slab of mountain and thinks, 'yeah, nah this'll do?' I mean, it doesn't even have hinges or lubricant. It's just – it's _hopeless_. They may as well have used sand or _The Force._ My local council could build a more functional door and that's saying something considering they put 'pull-to-open' signs on a revolving entrance.”

Brute strength did the trick. Almost immediately the rock ground against the floor of the tunnel – disappearing into the wall, inch by inch. As it opened, they could smell the cool air from the next set of tunnels rush against them with a cursory greeting of grit. It was odd – wet even. Like they'd opened up the heart of some underground cave system.

“Is that the one you walked face-first into and shattered the glass?”

“It was meant to _revolve_.”

“No dead BBC presenters. Shame...” May observed, when they'd opened the tunnel far enough to squeeze through. Their tunnel wasn't man-made any more. It had changed to a bare surface of cave complete with the remains of cave dwelling creatures that used to make homes out of the surface – presumably before inconsiderate humans had locked them up.

“Pass me your torch...” Clarkson asked, holding out his hand expectantly to May.

“What... Why? No!”

“Look, if I'm going to go first then I'm not doing it with this penlight.”

“You should have taken better care of your things, that's what your problem is.”

“I'll remember that next time I'm squeezing my ass down a shaft into an ancient ruin,” he muttered, but at least he was given the torch. “We're heading downhill,” he added, as the ground started to slope away from them quite sharply. “Watch your step too – it's bloody slippery.”

Which was unnerving. As was the sound of running water which grew more distinct the deeper they ventured into the cave. If the crew had been receiving any live footage before, they wouldn't be now. There was too much stone between them and the surface to transmit any kind of signal. Even their radios had gone a deathly brand of silence. James was starting to miss the ever-present sound of static that he used to rage on about it.

“Careful...” James reached for the back of Clarkson's shirt when the larger man lost his footing and stumbled a bit.

“It's this shit growing on the ground. You see it? Moss or something. How can anything grow down here without light? It wasn't on any of the Richard Attenborough shows that I remember watching as a kid. They probably came in and pre-carpeted the place for him. Oh god. Not more fucking spiders. Jesus. Hammond – got a present for you.”

“Shut. Up.” Hammond muttered, hanging behind May. He figured that those two were taller than him and would clear away all the webs.

“No really, you'll like this one – it's all fury...” Clarkson insisted. He had it on the edge of his torch and turned around, brandishing it at May's camera. This resulted in an unwise game of 'spider dare' which very nearly concluded with all three of them bitten and only ended when Clarkson called mercy with three eight-legged friends hanging onto the back of his thread-bare shirt.

“Well, that was a good use of our time,” Hammond trembled, as they started back on their adventure down the tunnel. “Yep, I'm only starving to death now. Did you bring food?”

“No.” May replied. “Did you?”

“Do I look like I have pockets?” Clarkson muttered, moderately paranoid that there might be residual spiders on him.

“Oy careful!” James reached forward and grabbed onto the back of Clarkson's shirt _again._ It ripped in protest, the fabric sick and tired of being pulled around. “That's a river.”

A river at the bottom of a short drop. Actually, now that they thought of it they could hear the sound of the water rushing through the innards of the tunnels. They shined their sickly torches over it, illuminating a network of deadly rocks and pitch-black water which was freezing from spending its life underground.

“You reckon we could drink that?”

“Don't see why not,” Hammond replied. “I mean, you can normally drink mountain water.”

Clarkson shrugged and lowered himself off the small overhang and into the ankle deep stream. It was so cold that it bit at his hand as he scooped some up and tentatively sipped it. “Not bad. Come on!”

They all drank and then decided to follow the water – which was a great idea for a while but they did start to regret it – especially Clarkson with his one shoe and now frozen foot.

“Hey – can you hear that?” May stopped the party, raising his hand to listen.

“Crackling sound?” Hammond asked helpfully.

“Radios!” May bounced excitedly. “The static is back. We must be in range.” He pulled one out and flicked it on. _“Oy you cocks!”_ he shouted at the radio. _“You bloody there?”_

There was a moment of quiet and then the radio buzzed back.

“ _Still alive then?”_ It was Andy. _“I had odds the other way.”_

It was difficult to tell if he was joking. Probably not.

“ _Andy, you cunt.”_ Jeremy had taken control of the radio, snatching it off May. _“It's bloody cold in this ruin and I got stuck on the way down. Are you actually trying to kill us on this one? I'd have appreciated a heads up. Whose going to water my plants when I'm gone? Certainly not you, you lazy bugger.”_

“ _God, how we'd missed you and your wit.”_ Andy mocked back. _“Ah yes, I see your dot on the satnav. Wait, how the hell did you get all the way over there?”_

“ _Our dot on the – wait, how the hell do you know where we are? Did you put some kind of tracking devices on us? Andy! Andy...”_

“ _How else would we keep an eye on you in a jungle this big?”_

“ _Christ, it's not James bloody Bond.”_

“That's painfully obvious,” Hammond added. “I mean, well look at us. They only thing we have in common with that git is the accent.”

“Not your accent,” May pointed out rather cruelly. “Never heard of a spy from Burmingham.”

“That's racist.”

“No it's town-ish.”

“Would you two hush, I'm trying to organise a rescue. _Sorry Andy, could you say that last bit again? I had a couple of very large rats in my ear.”_

“ _Did you find the lost city?”_

“ _Nah. Just a really big rock and some fancy walls. What do you mean, 'no rescue until we find the city'?”_

 


	25. No. Not For Any Reason.

**Chapter 25: No. Not For Any Reason**

“Look _I'm_ the one that's got an issue with the height thing! I know that sounds odd, coming from a person of my statue but I really do. I don't like them but you don't see me carrying on like a Hilux.” Clarkson insisted, determined to be the presenter making the most whining noises on camera. There was an award for it in the Christmas special. If they were still doing those...

“Well, you _are_ a bit,” May replied.

“It's not exactly like I had a lot to bargain for considering Andy started with, 'no city, no rescue'. At least he's agreed to get us out of this cave where he has assured me that there will be many many beers awaiting us.”

“ _By jumping onto a rope suspended from a helicopter hovering over a cliff and pool of unknown depth!”_ The hamster raged, prickling his fur up. Or he would have done if he had any. At the present it was just the eyebrows that went sideways. “You're _mad._ I'm just – I'm not. No. Not for any reason. Ever.”

“I agree with Hammond.” James was rather calm, fiddling with their last working torch. “Now I know that's not a phrase uttered very often but he does have a point.”

“What point is that?” Clarkson asked, arms folded defensibly. He seemed to be unaware of the cobwebs adorning his sleeves that glowed faintly in the back-light of the cave entrance.

“That helicopter leap of faith equates to certain death.”

“No it _doesn't_.”

“It _does_.” Hammond insisted.

“I've run the math,” May assured him, then added. “When was the last time you held onto anything for more than five seconds? And don't say your cock,” May held up his hand to shush Clarkson, “because you're ancient and it doesn't work properly.”

“Oh – boy...” Hammond covered his face with his hands. Then his ears. This was going to get ugly.

Clarkson strutted from the entrance of the cave toward the depths were May lurked with his half-broken torch. The more he fussed with it, the more broken it became. “I might have some miles on the clock but I'm not a stone effigy. I'm not one of these weird rock daggers.”

“Stalagmites...”

“Stag-mites. I wasn't dripped fed from a misshapen lump of solidified coral reef.”

“Well actually, that's a stalactite.”

Clarkson blinked in genuine confusion. “Is it? They're different?”

“Yeah,” James nodded. “You've got all sorts. Columns, flowstones, straws... Couple of nice examples over here actually.”

“Jesus May, how much time do you spend wandering about in caves?”

“More so recently,” he pointed at the cave they were currently standing in. “Not as much time as you spend in your attic. What do you do up there anyway? I've been meaning to ask. You're not making one of those supernatural documentaries, are you? They're rubbish.”

“Looking for priceless relics to flog on that other show.”

“I _love_ that show,” James nodded with Clarkson before they both started recalling from memories of it.

“Sorry,” Hammond interrupted. “Are you two still fighting? It's difficult to tell. Wait – what's that?”

“What's _what_?” Clarkson insisted. Then he heard it too – the heavy _thwap thwap thwap_ of helicopter blades lording over the jungle.

“Clarkson, you cock – did you say _yes_ without asking us?”

“I ah...”

Hammond scampered over to the edge. There was indeed a black speck growing in the sky. “You twat! What are we going to do now? If you say, 'jump out of a cave...'”

*~*~*

“Gosh, that's quite a wind it's making.”

“Stop fussing!” Jeremy batted James away. Like Meercats, they'd popped their heads out from the mouth of the cave to get a look at their rescue preparations. So far, it wasn't good. Clarkson, unusually, had been pretty much on point. There was a helicopter loitering outside there cave where a pair of burly, camouflaged men unwrapping a rope. They let it fall down from the helicopter where it swung free. It was _near_ the cave.

“I wouldn't jump that if I was on the ground!” Hammond, as the shortest party and least likely to make it out alive, felt the need to voice his objection. “Come on – let's think about this. If we miss it's rock – yeah – or water _then_ rocks.”

“Or jungle. You might hit that green bit at the edge,” James added helpfully. Another man leaned out of the helicopter and threw a small package at them. James unwittingly caught it and opened it to find, “Gloves?”

“As the experienced climber that I am,” Jeremy picked a pair of gloves from the parcel, “I know that if you're going to climb a rope you must wear the skin of a fluffy rodent or you end up with no hands at all. These small ones must be yours.” He handed them to Hammond.

“Come on man...” James added, this time quite seriously. The cameras were still rolling, mounted to their helmets but this felt _real_. “What are we really doing?”

Jeremy returned the serious gesture and nodded at the noisy mechanical lump. “Exactly what I said.”

*~*~*

James May had done some pretty terrifying things in his time but as he stood at the mouth of the cave, under the spray of a half-arsed waterfall, clinging to the freezing rock, he was genuinely afraid. His grip on the sharp rock was so tight that his knuckles went white. There was no blood left in his hands which probably explained why he couldn't feel them vibrating with the cold. _Clarkson was mad._ He thought. The enormous lens of the camera mounted in the helicopter so close to his face didn't help either. At first glance it seemed close – a hop, skip and a jump... When you averted your eyes downward though, it was a totally different story.

_He couldn't do it_ , he realised. There was simply no way that he could make his body take the jump.

“What are we going to do?” Richard, who had appeared like an apparition, asked. He was trembling too but that was probably from the cold.

“Die in this cave, I guess...” Was May's answer. “Is that ape really going to do it?”

“Well he's got the gloves on and he's started muttering a pep talk to himself so the signs are all there. His desperate need to impress in this adventure is going to get his flat-arse killed. Won't you go and talk to him?”

Little frown lines appeared between May's eyebrows. “And say what, exactly?”

“I don't know... 'Jezza, you're my best mate – don't try and jump off a cliff into a helicopter today.'”

The helicopter, having finished its dry run, lifted it off to ready the cameras.

*~*~*

Jeremy stumbled back to the entrance of the cave where his co-presenter sat. The helicopter had landed high above them, on the peak of the ugly conglomerate of rock calling itself a mountain. He lowered his body down, joining James in the mouth of the huge cave where the freezing river trickled off the volcanic rock and tumbled far below into the small pool, hidden in the forest. They had quite a view from up here. The dense jungle rolled out in a canopy, dotted with flowering trees and extraordinarily loud birds. He was regretting not bringing his binoculars. Clarkson had a real fondness for sitting back, watching the feathered things of the world cruise about. There was something freeing about it.

“How far away from the production camp are we?” James asked, fumbling with a pebble.

“A day's trek at least,” he replied. “Andy can't work out how we covered so much ground. Where's the hamster?”

“Prodding the world's largest cave dwelling spider. You know, for someone that's mortally afraid of the things he certainly spends a large portion of his life trying to get bitten.”

“I think he's exacting some form of misguided 'revenge'. In his mind anyway. You know, we're never going to find that lost city.”

Jeremy frowned, turning to James. Both of them were (quite frankly) blue with cold. “What makes you say that?”

“Isn't it obvious? There isn't a lost city. It's all elaborate click bait for the rushes.”

“There's _always_ a lost city,” Jeremy insisted. “Especially in these places. We've probably stumbled over ten of them already – not including the one we crashed into earlier. I'd like to stumble over a Rangerover.”

James smirked. “You're still sore about that, then.”

“'Course I'm sore. I _love_ Rangerovers and what did we get? Bikes. Sodding, antiquated, biped rubbish.”

“You're an antique biped... We've got bigger problems than your preference for noisy transport.”

“Aside from the oncoming starvation and distinct lack of gin? I'm _sober_ James. My liver doesn't know what to do with all this fresh blood. It's making me nauseous.”

James laughed until his smokers' cough caught up with him. “Yes,” he recovered. “Aside from that dastardly tragedy. We're going to have to climb down the side of this cliff without dying before that helicopter comes back. I don't know about you but whatever tomb raiding skills I possessed earlier are damaged by the hypothermia I have in both legs.”

Clarkson leaned over the edge a little. It was a long way down but not impossibly so. With five or ten beers and the deduction of a couple of decades from his joints, he might have been persuaded to have a go. “You know – this is the side of TV they never show. The actual danger that we end up in. They think it's all cosy with a wine bar down the road and some kind of jungle city with hot springs and cabana boys wearing leaves but it's not. It's _this_. There are spiders on my eyeballs and bits of ice stuck in my jacket – I've got one shoe left and half a dozen jungle viruses warring in my corpse because I forgot to take that thingy yesterday.”

May tapped the Go-Pro mounted to his helmet. “Don't worry. When you plummet to your death, be it by helicopter or cliff, I promise to capture it on film.”

“At least you're not holding it. I've never been a fan of shakey-cam.”

“What are you saying about my hands?”

“Nothing. Only – I've seen you trying to mend enough tasteless bikes to know that you use a magnetic screwdriver.”

“Clarkson, you moron – everybody uses a magnetic screwdriver – so they don't drop the ruddy screws.”

“I don't.”

“That's because the only tool you own, besides your head, is a hammer.”

“Oh gawd...” Hammond scampered up. “Are you two still fighting?”

James pointed to a small black box in Hammond's hand. “What's that, then?”

“What this? Radio.”

“How the blazers did you get a new one of those?”

“One of the producers threw it into the cave. They're coming back shortly and they expect us to be at the entrance, wearing the gloves. Occupational Health and Safety – or something.”

“And that, ladies and gentleman,” Jeremy turned to speak directly at James' helmet, “sums up everything that's gone wrong with society. I'm telling you, too many lattes has driven an entire generation to the brink of madness. Hammond – what are you doing?”

Hammond had half a pink glove on his hand. “Putting my gloves on.”

“I thought you were against the jumping out of the cave thing?” James felt betrayed.

“Well, I am but I'm also against dying in this cave with you two bickering as the final soundtrack of my life. Better to get it over and done quick, you know?”

 


	26. Leap of Faith

**Chapter 26: Leap Of Faith**

Hammond had to wait for the shot to be re-set and by that time they'd argued five times, fallen out – nearly slipped over the edge of the cave, broken and repaired the radio then drawn twigs regarding who would be first. James was accused of cheating, more sticks had to be found and a re-match produced the same result. May gave a lecture regarding the tumultuous history of 'Rock, Paper, Scissors' and by that stage, Hammond's bravery had whittled away to zero.

Guilted into decency by a sad looking hamster, Jeremy decided to (probably quite literally) sacrifice himself on the alter of 'Britishness' by taking his place at the start line.

“I can't watch.” Hamster buried his face in two damp, shaking hands. The helicopter hovered in front of them with its massive blades pushed the waterfall back into the cave, showering them in utterly freezing rubbish.

“Come on man, tilt your head up so the camera gets a better angle.” James insisted, literally grabbing the sides of Hammond's helmet until he was looking directly at the helicopter. “This is high up!” He complained. “Everything is slippery.”

_'Ready?'_ The radio crackled. Andy's white halo was a smear in the helicopter window.

James lifted his working radio to his lips.  _'Ready...'_ Then held up his hand to the man lingering behind in the cave.

“ _So going to regret this...”_ Jeremy muttered to his own camera, tugging at his gloves up to make sure they were in place. _How ridiculous_ , he thought. What were the chances of him actually needing to use the gloves? _Nothing. Probably._ He was about to enter a new state of being as a meat pancake. “Why haven't they given me a parachute?” He complained.

James stopped himself from explaining the mechanics of parachutes.

James and Richard bookended the came ahead of Jeremy, looming like two great statues outside a temple. They were uneven, of course. Richard was the one that lost its head, tastefully eroded by the weather. God, what was he thinking of?  _Focus Jeremy. Cave. Jump. Helicopter. Beer. Gloating. In that order._

_Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud._

The thrash of blades against the air was all he could hear as he started his run. Jeremy hoped they weren't filming the actual run. It honestly was a curse sent by some vengeful god to punish him for satirical brilliance. Jeremy's last thought as he left the cave and reached out, eyes fixed on the rope was,  _What the hell am I doing?_

Enormous cameras leaned out from the helicopter. Jeremy fumbled for the rope, grasping madly at the air. It moved, swaying side to side like a python. Clarkson smothered it, strangled it and realised all at once, “I've gone and done it!”

Jeremy was swinging wildly beneath the helicopter like the strangest monkey that had ever lived, twirling as the rope fought the sudden weight. Even the helicopter lurched slightly.

“That's really annoying,” Richard admitted.

“You owe me ten quid.” May replied.

“That defies the laws of gravity, logic and television comedy,” he complained.

That may be but a bet was a bet and May intended to collect on it. “My turn then. Out of interest, which way did you wager on me?”

“I didn't bet on you, mate.” Richard admitted. “Thought Jeremy would be dead so there was no one to pay up.”

“Fair enough. That's not a pretty sight...” May added, as Jeremy refused (or couldn't) pull himself up.

“ _But I've already done the hard work!”_ He could be heart shouting at a producer. _“Honestly, there's nothing funny about an old man crawling up a rope. Pull me up you lazy -”_ The rest wouldn't make the broadcast, not even on the internet.

"Nah mate," Richard sighed. "Should be me next considering I technically lost."

“Come on, you're not still nervous,” May nudged Hammond, “not now the ape's gone and done it.”

“You know what it is?” Hammond replied, “I don't want to die on a Tuesday.”

“Ay?”

“Tuesdays... They're just so – average. You die on a Monday and at least you think, 'well, Mondays are shit anyway'. Actually, 'death' is often a better option than the actual Monday. You go on a Wednesday and you've made it half way through the week – sort of like being a runner up, you've achieved something of worth. Thursday's filming, so I've died doing something spectacular. Friday and Saturday it must be death-by-studio audience, which I'm sure has a great story and Sunday we're always shit-faced in the pub, which is a great way to go. Tuesday's very, 'meh'.”

“Hammond...”

“What?”

“It's Friday.”

“What? How is it Friday?” May held up his watch. Hammond tilted his head. “How is your watch still working?”

“Superior technology.”

“Friday's a shit day to die. You miss out on the weekend.”

They received an angry radio call instructing them to get a move on. Jeremy was in the helicopter, swearing at a someone who was trying to wrap a blanket around him and Andy was giving them the 'thumbs up'.

Richard was so paranoid about not being able to reach the rope that he nearly jumped clear past it. He launched himself out of the cave like some kind of winged-jungle-possum. There was a yelp as he scrambled for the rope and then suddenly he was swinging around manically, just like Jeremy. Unlike Jeremy, Richard scrambled up the rope and straight into the helicopter where he swore never ever ever to do any caving again. That only left May who didn't have anyone to mock him as he prepared for the leap of faith in the dark corner of the cave.

“I'm going to let you in on a little secret, viewers,” May addressed his personal camera. “I'm not much fond of heights, cold water makes me long for the Industrial Revolution and I'm not mad keen on spending any time flying around in a small metal box with those two. Right. Gloves. Very important, gloves. Dating at least as far back as the Greeks, though they appeared to use their gloves for fighting rather than protection during ill-advised rope activities. Truthfully I can't feel my fingers anyway it's so chuffing freezing in here.”

“Do you think he's going to do it?” Richard asked Jeremy, as they sipped warm soup in the back of the helicopter.

“Yes...” Clarkson drawled.

“Well, then where is he?”

“It's Captain Slow. He's probably counting how many paces to the edge of the cave and deciding which foot to take off from.”

“Oh god. We could run out of fuel before he's finished doing that. We should have sent him out first.”

“Right and thirty paces to the jump,” May muttered to himself. “Here we go. Viewers, if I don't survive this and you're watching from recovered footage at the bottom of a mysterious jungle lake, thank you for watching. Don't travel with friends.”

For the longest time, it looked like May was going to make it. He exited the cave, pushed off the rock and sailed elegantly through the air with both his arms outstretched. His hair fanned out behind him. A terrible shirt rippled in the wind. The cameras zoomed in on his expression of pure bewilderment at the approaching rope. What you couldn't see from above was how catastrophic the angle of James' jump was. He'd veered quite badly to the side and the rope was nowhere near his fumbling paws. By the time he realised, James was already losing height, sinking from the air toward the hungry waters below.

Richard and Jeremy startled, swearing sharply as their idiot co-presenter vanished from view. There was no jolt to the helicopter  _and oddly_ no scream either. It all ended very fast with an explosion of water at the bottom and tidal wave drenching the rim of the lake.

*~*~*

“Maaaaaate...” Richard was the first to approach the very wet, very unhappy presenter perched on a boulder by the side of the lake. The cameras stalked James as though he were some kind of rare jungle creature, hanging back behind Richard. Jeremy was off to the side, using the boulders as protection from May's impending rage.

“I don't want to talk to you, or you. Go away.” May sulked.

“Do you still have all your bits?” He asked. Well, most of his dignity was gone and one of the gloves but the rest of May seemed to have swum safely to the shore. Captain Fastidious, in addition to being sodden, was dusted with an assortment of leaves, insects and anything else that had been fermenting in the water.

*~*~*

“James, as it turned out, was quite angry at our success and insisted that we perform an act of penance to make up for our good fortune. The Producers suggested that I should be put in charge of the tent building activities while Hammond has been left to construct an authentic jungle dinner. This angered James more.” Jeremy turned meaningfully away from the camera to look upon the burning drum with May perched nearby, nursing a cup of tea.

May averted his eyes to the cameraman brave enough to follow him. “I now have, literally, every disease every loosed upon the planet. Whilst swimming to safety I was bitten, see here? Yeah sure, it doesn't look much now but that'll probably fester over the next few days until I inevitably transform into Jeremy Clarkson. Gods, speaking of. Do you see that great oaf over there staring at the piles of material that theoretically construct tents? He has no idea what to do with them. So not only am I cold and miserable, I'm going to be spending the night curled up to this burning drum. I thought I was going to kill them in the Artic but this time – I won't fail. Clarkson's going down with a hammer.”

Unaware of his co-presenter's murderous thoughts, Clarkson very calmly strutted around, picking the right spot for a tent. After stomping around it for a while like a dog making its bed, Jeremy earnestly set about constructing one of the tents.

“If they ask me, _'Mr May, would you like to do a special again?'_ No. No I would rather make a curry out of my own arm. Can't even put up a tent properly,” James muttered, sipping his tea. “Look at that, viewers, he's going to-” James paused, watching as the centre tent pole was yanked sharply to one side by the fabric, then the whole sad mess collapsed straight on top of Jeremy making May roar with laughter. Eventually, when May could take no more, he wandered over to a pile of swearing material and prodded it with his shoe. “Need a hand?”

A very timid, 'Yes please...' replied.

 


	27. Culinary Delights

“Is it a tent?”

May wandered back a few paces to get a better gauge of the monstrosity constructed primarily of swearing, complaining and bits of nylon rope. “I don't know...” he admitted. “If we're going to adhere to the Oxford definition, which of course we _should_ being all terribly proper and British about the whole thing, it states that a 'tent' is: _'A portable shelter made of cloth, supported by one or more poles and stretched tight by cords or loops attached to pegs driven into the ground.'_ Or something like that.” May finished.

Setting aside the fact that May appeared to come pre-loaded with a dictionary, Jeremy folded his arms across his chest and wandered around the corpse of material, pondering. “Well, its got most of those things you mentioned. Pole. Material...” He pointed out various bits. “Stretched a bit there in the corner where the peg's gone in crooked.”

“They're not particularly straight though – are they? The poles I mean, _look at them..._ ”

“No one said _anything_ about them being straight, James.”

“Well, it's kind of implied.”

“ _How_ is it implied?” Jeremy protested. “What if we're building one of those eco-tents? You know, the round, dome-thingys that look like someone painted an igloo green or the hipster variety – the – well, you've seen them.”

“I have not.”

“Yeees you have, at those music festivals you frequent. If you took a can of cola – cut it in half and stepped on it a bit – that's the -”

“Since when do I go to music festivals?” James' eyebrows contorted into a confused frown. “That was a wine festival, you oaf!” He finally realised what his colossal muppet of a co-presenter was on about. “And they didn't have 'tents'.”

“What were they then?”

“Pavilions.”

“That's a type of tent.”

“No, Jeremy.”

“They are.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No...”

“How is it that you can recite dictionary definitions? It's not normal, James. It's boring.”

“Since when was being knowledgeable considered boring?”

“Since you filmed not one but _three_ programmes where all you did for forty-five minutes was tighten bolts I've seen cups of tea with more going on.” The only pole supporting their 'tent' snapped violently allowing the entire disaster to collapse into a muddle of canvas. “Tenting is rubbish. You do it.”

“This is your punishment. I only came over to mock and supervise.”

“Well you haven't supervised me very well.” There was a long pause where they both eyed their creation.

*~*~*

“Oh god!” Hammond backed away so fast he rear-ended a tree. “You can't do that. Please don't do that. Stop doing that!” Followed by an unintelligible sound of a panicked hamster.

The quality of the footage was taken down a few notches by the cameraman's inability to stop laughing. Listing to the side, the camera caught the shortest presenter plastered against a rainforest tree, oblivious to the line of biting ants running beside his shoulder, muttering incoherent objections regarding the enormous funnel-web being extracted from the forest floor. Two native trackers had coaxed the poisonous spider out from its hole. They had it by the front legs, tugging the irate thing forwards with twigs that they used like chopsticks. Until a moment ago, Hammond had been bravely poking the hole with them – right up until he saw the curved fangs dripping with venom.

“I'm a _car presenter_!” Hammond squeaked in a panic. “Not a – nature thing.”

“The volume of documentaries in you CV suggests otherwise...” Andy muttered loudly enough for the camera to pick up.

“Those were different!”

“Yeah – you were nearly eaten by a lion in one of them. That was enormously entertaining.”

“Lions are fine,” Hammond insisted. “One big bite and arrrrrr...” he mimed what Andy could only assume was 'being eaten by a lion'. “...then it's all over. Spiders – they just _jab_ and you suffer horribly for hours. They're sadistic. The shadows they make as they come at you over the walls.”

“Hammond...”

“What?”

Andy simply nodded at Hammond's arm which was now a seething nest of biting ants. “ARGH!!!!!!!”

*~*~*

“Did you hear something?” James poked his head up from under a piece of tent. Jeremy was nearby, trying to work out how to make two bits of pole become one slightly longer bit of pole.

“Nope. Oh for Christ's sake – why's it gone and done that?” His two poles suddenly became three. “Why don't they make tents that just _go up_. What is the point of turning this exercise into a skills test I mean, think about it – who has ever put a tent up in a nice, warm, flat area? You don't! It's _always_ raining or freezing or covered it bits of deadly bug or the murdered pieces of your mate. I mean, your hands are shaking – whatever's not tied down blows off a cliff. This is just a _miserable_ experience. I want a button, like one of those new electric cars where the engine starts. Self-building tents. If we can go to Pluto it must be possible.”

“Tenting is meant to be an experience.”

“No one said it had to be a horrible one! Now it's in four! James!”

“Don't throw bits of tent at me! God man, look what you've done to it.” A few minutes later James carefully handed Jeremy back one long pole. “Careful, considered thought. That's all you – _ow..._ ” Jeremy folded over double, laughing at James' misfortune. “Useless piece of sweat-shop constructed, poorly conceived, mangled bit of utter-”

*~*~*

“What have you got there?” Jeremy asked, standing beside a burning drum with half a bottle of warm beer. Hammond had emerged from the jungle carrying a white box as far away from his body as his little arms could reach.

“Move. Move. Move. Not happy. Move. Jeremy. Do not touch me. Jeremy. Shut up and go away or I'll drop this near you. Jeremy. No. Back off you -” Netflix inserted a courtesy _beep._

Jeremy came to loom over Hammond's shoulder, following him like a shadow at noon. “Who are they?” He pointed to the native trackers laughing and joking with the camera crew as they headed toward the real tent (which the presenters were banned from).

“Oh mate – is that our tent?” Richard momentarily forgot about this precarious cargo when he caught sight of the dismayed construction.

“I'm more interested in what's in the box.”

“Top secret. Go away.”

“Well there you have it, viewers.”

“Jeremy, I'm serious! Touching me will result in a death.”

*~*~*

Many, many hour later the sun was dragged back into the cradle of the earth and the producers had lit fires around the camp, encircling them in an orange glow. It was partly for light but mostly to keep out the forest and all the things that liked to live in it. Some of those things had been smuggled in via Hammond's box.

“I can't watch!” His hands were glued firmly to his face as a pair of locals tried to shuffle the contents of the box out. All he could hear was the rustle of hairy legs and gnash of fang.

“Jesus wept...” Jeremy backed away so fast he almost ran May down.

“Watch it you great numpty...” May automatically went to push him off but Clarkson couldn't be moved. He pointed stupidly at the box muttering. _'May – May – May!'_ As if repeating the other man's name would somehow resolve the situation. “Calm down, both of you. Pair of utter pilocks!” May complained.

“No – don't go over there!” Clarkson added, trying to grab at his sleeve.

May ignored him, approaching the curious box. It was full of enormous spiders, at least as big as his hand. They were furious, sandwiched together in a mess of legs and eyes. “They don't look happy...” And they got even less happy as they were skewered with twigs and held over the fire. Spider barbecue. “It's all right Jezza – they're food.”

Jeremy relaxed a bit. “You know I'll eat anything. This challenge must be for Hammond. Hammond?”

“Nope.” Hammond replied, hands still over his face.

“Closing your eyes isn't going to make it go away.”

“Yessss it will. If I can't see it – it's not real.”

“It's okay okay Hammond, they're like chips. Black, crispy chips.” Jeremy assured him, trying a leg. “Few hairs left. Why is that?”

James, who had actually been joking, turned on Jeremy with a horrified look. “What the hell are you doing man?”

“You said it was food.” Jeremy shrugged, trying another leg. They were crispy – a bit too much charcoal to be pleasant but otherwise relatively inoffensive compared to some of the things he'd eaten.

“I was tormenting Hammond. Oh god... Jeremy. Really... Stop. Please – I beg you.”

“You try one.” Jeremy picked up one of the skewered, roasted spiders and held it toward James – who scooted closer to Hammond. “Pair of total wimps. Just one iddy-bitty spider...”

“If you're trying to be enticing, you've thoroughly failed,” Hammond assured him. “I would rather eat sand.”

“Sh!” James reached out, hushing his mates. “Do you hear that?”

Somewhere, deep in the forest, was the unmistakable rumble of a Range Rover engine.

 


	28. Range Rover

“Andy, I think I might love you, mate.”

“Don't get too excited,” Richard held Jeremy back from levelling a hug on their Executive Producer. He was lumbering alarmingly close with arms outstretched and two great ape paws at the ready. Mind you, Hammond was more a pebble in a stream rather than the Hoover Damn of barricades. “There's a catch, mate – there's always a catch.”

“Why would there be a catch?” Andy replied, keeping his arms firmly folded across his chest. Beneath was a once-white t-shirt that had been worn so long forest-things were starting to nest in it. “Have you considered that maybe the crew is tired of listening to you lot drivel on about your _terrible_ misfortune or the fact that you're taking far too long to find the lost city and we're in actual danger of running out of both film and money? In any case, you trashed the bikes. It'd take a holy ritual and half a pool of animal blood to resurrect those things. Let's face it, there isn't a saintly bone among you three. Or a mechanical one.”

“You don't use film any more.” Jeremy pointed out.

“Memory sticks, by their very nature, contain finite quantities of data,” Andy narrowed his eyes. “And half the Go-Pros are _gone_.”

“In a past life they were socks.”

Jeremy's attempt at humour was met with stone wall eyes. The Go-Pros were expensive and the production team was semi-serious about super-gluing them to body parts if this kept up.

Richard hesitantly touched the gifted Range Rover. “Is it rigged to explode? Is it full of spiders? Are we going to have to turn it into an aeroplane? I just want to get those options out of the way.”

“Those are all valid questions.” Andy left un-answered, as he wandered off to snarl at a few bumbling crew members trying to fish a snake out of the extension cable box.

James raised his hand helpfully when they were alone. “I've got a pilot's licence.”

“Shut up, James...” Muttered Clarkson.

“Well – I _have_.”

“You've also got a masters degree in music but I'm not about to let you conduct a symphony.”

“I could do that too if – Hammond... What are you doing, mate?”

Hammond had climbed up onto the roof of the Range Rover and now was awkwardly perched below the tree line. “Checking its roof racks.”

“If they're any good we can strap you to them.”

“Jezza...”

“He's the smallest. If one of us is going on the roof, it's going to be him, isn't it?”

“Those racks could carry several reasonably sized canoes. It hardly matters which one of us ends up strapped there.”

“James...” Jeremy replied, rather plaintively. “It's not about the size of the racks – it's the size of the _fight_ he'd put up as we tie him down.”

“The roof racks aren't for any of us, you idiots!” Came Hammond's voice from above. “They're for our stuff. Obviously. There is quite a lot of it, if you hadn't noticed. We're not very good at travelling light.”

MANY MANY MONTHS AGO

“He's finally gone and cracked it then,” Richard said, as he and James approached the small, glowing trapezium in the middle of the island. It had just gone dark and the winds that liked to ravage the coast were kicking up, artfully distressing the sea of heather around them.

James held a lantern to the dark while Richard opted for the much more sensible option of a torch. Behind them, the lighthouse dutifully sent out its beacon into the abyss, spinning silently around and around. Their cars were abandoned beside the small stone cottage beneath leaving a pair of ludicrously coloured stains on the vista. Somewhere in the distance, a dog was howling at the moon as it lifted off the water.

“He was always going on about owning a lighthouse. Didn't think any of that bollocks was – well...”

“Not bollocks?” Richard pulled his hood over his unusually dark hair. “I wonder how much of the rubbish he utters is actually true? You know – generally.”

“Not that bit about owning a dinosaur skeleton,” James assured him. “Or a cruise liner. Or a war plane.”

“Oh no – that _is_ true.”

“Seriously?”

“Yep. He mistook it for a lawn ornament.”

James started laughing before promptly choking on the chilly, fresh air. His lungs were so used to the London smog that they rebelled against the slight scent of salt and the unmistakeable trace of animal activities. Primitive. That's what this was. Frankly he was surprised that Clarkson would pick a place like this to vanish off to. He was as pedantic as the rest of them when it came to dirt and microscopic things that bent on murder. Mind you, there wasn't much in the way of paps around here.

“There he is...” James pointed out the red ember of a cigarette burning.

They found Jeremy sitting on a dramatic assortment of boulders, watching the moon rise over the sea. Scattered around his nest was a half-drunk bottle of beer, pack of fags and his hideously loud lighter.

“What are you doing all the way out here?” Richard said, the first to approach. “I thought you didn't do, 'tenting'?”

Jeremy took another drag of his cigarette before stubbing it out on the rock. “How did you find me?” he asked before interrupting himself, “Andy... You don't look like you're here to collect me. Are those sleeping bags?” He added in alarm.

“They are,” James replied. “And beer and things to make a camp fire.”

Jeremy was forced to shake his head in soft amusement. “You can't make a camp fire amongst the heather, you uncultured nut.”

“Oh... well... It'll be a cold, Italian style supper then.”

“Daft muppets...” Jeremy slid off the rock. They were definitely carrying enough to settle in for the night, heaven help him. All he wanted was a bit of peace. “So I guess there's no getting rid of you lot then?”

“Nope...” They replied together.

“It's a long bloody way out here, you know,” James added. “Dare I say, almost an inconvenience, Clarkson.”

“May?”

“What?”

“Pass us a beer, you miserable sod!”

PRESENT DAY

A soft purr rumbled through the throat of the Range Rover as it awoke. It had that new car smell, proper detailed interior and, aside from some unavoidable mud on the duco, it was in perfect nick. They must have airlifted it down because the other vehicles looked like survivors from a zombie war zone with their vital organs taped back on, side mirrors hacked off and a few missing windows covered by articles of clothes.

“It's a trap,” Hammond insisted, riding shotgun with Jeremy. James was in the back holding their map, trying not to slide across the seat as Jeremy took the corners with a heavy dose of force.

“Watch out for the camera,” Jeremy replied, pointing to a remaining Go-Pro mounted alarmingly close to Hammond's head. He'd only just missed the sharp edge as he leaned down to rat through all the crevices for snacks. He returned with a few Snickers bars and a packet of crisps which he tore open immediately crating a cloud of salt. “You should have had some of the Tarantula,” Jeremy smirked, “it was lovely, wasn't it May?”

“Like pork scratchings.”

“Shut up about that already,” Hammond hissed at his co-presenters. “What are you doing with that map anyway?”

May folded it over loudly, making sure that it made a good rustling noise for the cameras. “If you must know -”

“Oh, I must...” Hammond interrupted.

“Sh... I'm plotting our current position.”

“May...”

“Yes, Clarkson?”

“Shouldn't you be focusing on plotting where we're _going_? I already know where I am so what's the use in that?”

“He does have a point,” the Hamster joined in. “By the time you work out where we are the entire human civilisation will have collapsed into oblivion and been rebuilt by squirrels.”

“Petty fools, both of you,” James assured them. “Besides, I'm finished now anyway. See-” he leaned forward, knocking Jeremy's arm which caused the car to swerve slightly in the undergrowth, “-we're here.”

Richard frowned at the map. “That's not actually very helpful when you think about it,” he was forced to admit. “It's pretty much all jungle with cliffs of death thrown in.”

“And they haven't marked any secret ancient cities for us either. Jeremy – what on earth are you doing?”

“Playing a CD – obviously.”

“Oh lord...” Hammond squeaked. “Please tell me the crew haven't given him -” But they _had._ Moments later _Genesis_ was blaring and the ape was nodding his head and tapping the steering wheel with an immensely infuriating grin. It was everything he'd ever dreamed of; jungle, Range Rover, hideous music. Hammond collapsed forward, purposefully thunking his head on the dash in the hopes he'd be knocked unconscious.

“You realise eventually that joke is going to wear thin...” May shouted, fussing with his map. “And is quite possibly subject to copyright.”

“Sorry – can't hear you!” Jeremy mouthed back, then continued bobbing along. “Oh yeah.”

Hammond turned to his personal camera – which was nearly on his nose he was so close – and gave the world a pained pout. “This – this is how it ends...” He whined. “With an ape and a four-by-four.”

“Holy shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit!” Jeremy slammed on the brakes.

Hammond, already laying against the dash, felt his nose crumple sharply. Meanwhile James was propelled forward between the seats, landing among Jeremy and Richard, narrowly avoiding a gear stick ending up somewhere obscene.

“Blimey!” James hissed, using the pair of them as scaffolding. “What in the hell was that about? Clarkson? Clark-” James lifted head and found the reason staring him in the face on the windscreen. “Reverse. Reverse. _Reverse._ ” James grabbed the stick when Jeremy seemed frozen in panic, shifting it into reverse gear. “Drive!”

The very annoyed voice of their producer crackled through Jeremy's radio. “What the _hell_ do you think you're doing?” Andy yelled furiously, as the star-car reversed haphazardly through the undergrowth toward the support vehicles. “You're gonna bloody hit us!”

And he bloody _did_. Straight into the bonnet with his oversized tow bar. Well, that was it for Andy. He was out of the car like a shot, dragging his sound cords behind him in the leaf litter, still attached to the playback equipment. He was so enraged he couldn't hear his team shouting at him to 'wait a moment' and so was completely surprised to find himself yanked backwards. He toppled, arse-first – half-strangled by his litany of cords. The other produces were doing their best to free him while Richard Hammond very quietly initiated the central looking on their Range Rover.

“Why've you gone and done that?” May asked.

“Safety.” Hammond replied.

“How does that work – in your mind?” He continued, glancing out the back window. Andy was on his knees growling at his radio. “Unless your plan is to stay in this car forever I think we might be a bit... screwed.”

“We've got supplies.”

“Three packets of crisps and a few chocolate bars. Yes, that's the next twenty minutes covered. Oh – _hang on, lads!_ ”

“What? Wha... Well don't just point, use your descriptors!” Hammond muttered, as James grew ever more feverish. At the same time, Andy had finally caught up with them and now loomed outside Jeremy's window, glaring.

“Adjectives...” Jeremy interrupted. “I thought you lot were journalists.”

“Technically I'm a radio presenter and they're mostly illiterate. Good manners though. Never catch me swearing on camera- _Jesus-fuck-Jeremy!_ ” Hammond bounced out of his seat and instantly layered himself between the window and the seat like some kind of unfortunate gecko. “It's on the _inside!_ ”

“You see, what you've done there, Clarkson,” continued James, quite calmly as he was the furthest from danger, “is lock us in with the world's largest spider.”

_Knock. Knock. Knock._

It was Andy on the glass but Jeremy was plastered in fright, quite unable to lift his finger to the button. Muffled shouting followed until Andy realised what all the fuss was about. He spotted the underside of the Bird Eating Spider tapping its hairy legs against the inside of the windscreen and broke down in laughter. Figuring they were being punished sufficiently by the universe, he returned to the crew.

“What's wrong with those three?” The sound guy asked, carefully re-coiling the leads torn loose earlier.

“I've been asking myself that question for twenty-four years...” Andy replied.

 


	29. Flowers

“You know – I don't think I've ever seen you look worse. No, seriously Jeremy,” Hammond continued, eyeing his co-presenter warily, “are you sure you're not about to find a damp, dark corner somewhere to pupate? What was that film? The guy from the one with the dinosaurs.” Hammond couldn't think of it. “It's not 'good', man. That's all I'm saying. I think we need a witch doctor. Or a hack saw.”

“Stop your whining. I'm perfectly all right.” Jeremy muttered, ignoring the torrent of sweat that was dripping from the wrinkles in his brow like a goddamn tropical storm. It was hot in the Range Rover since the air conditioning conked out. A prank by the producers, he was absolutely certain. Any other time he might have rendered it fair play considering the sizable dent Car A now carried in its bonnet but with the heat in the billions of degrees and enough moisture in the air to raise the sea level half a metre, his patience was wearing thin. May wasn't helping. “Stop. Stop. I beg you, May.”

“Stop what?” asked May, thoroughly perplexed.

“That... rustling sound.”

James re-folded the map to check if that was the source of Jeremy's unreasonable resolve. It was. “That's going to be difficult Jezza, considering we need the map to navigate.”

“Navigate to where, James? What's the good of knowing where you are if you haven't got the faintest sodding clue where you're headed? I mean, do you see any ancient, undiscovered cities on the map? No. Look – I know you love this sort of thing and I know you're trying to help but if you re-fold that thing one more time I'm going to let one of the jungle animals drive while I crawl back over there and hit you with a CD case.”

“Will Young?”

“What?”

“Is that the CD you were planning on hitting me with?”

“What?!”

“Only, if I have a choice, I'd rather you use the Genesis album.” May was forced to elaborate when he received blank stares from the other two. “At least that way you might actually break it then I'll never have to hear its uncultured racket again. Every single trip ever you dredge it from the lair. It's the disk that refuses to die. What's it made out of – lead and cockroach wings?”

“Oh – don't be so dramatic,” Clarkson muttered, but May had protested so long Clarkson was starting to chuckle. “Besides, I only bring it to get a rise out of Hammond. Your eardrums are collateral.”

“I... can hear you. I am in the car. And I'm not deaf.” Hammond pointed out – then promptly prodded the glass of his window. “Hold on a moment, that, gentleman, looks like a proper sort of track.”

“Freshly made,” Clarkson agreed, as they turned onto it, edging the nose of their Rangey out into the clearing. “What do you think – BBC creation?”

“Hard to tell,” Hammond wound down his window and hung out of it as if he were some kind of forest tracker instead of a middling English farmer. “Looks fresh.”

“What utter tosh!” May struggled behind, still grumpy. “Jez– what are you doing?” He asked, as the vehicle pressed forward. “You're not honestly going to follow it, are you? Main roads don't lead to hidden cities.”

“James – I am tired of forest and things that want to chew on my leg. This has to be better.”

“And what are you going to do if this really was made by the BBC? They're not exactly going to welcome us into their camp and share the beer around.”

“Of course not,” Jeremy quipped, “they wouldn't have any beer. Stringent health and safety means they'll be on the tea which will sodding-well suit you.”

“Something to look forward to then, when we inevitably come barrelling into their camp.” Richard was starting to think the roof racks might be a good idea. “If it's all the same to you two, I'm going to kip here while you bicker. Wake me if there's a life threatening incident. On second thoughts _don't_. If I'm going to die horribly I'd rather not know about it.” And with that, Hammond tucked himself up against the window and packed in.

May unfolded the map -

\- which immediately led to Clarkson ripping the handbrake up so he could crawl into the back seat and kill his co-presenter.

*~*~*

“James?”

“Clarkson...”

“Why don't you tell the viewers what's transpired here?”

“Mostly because they're not going to believe it,” James replied, standing beside the Range Rover with his arms folded firmly across his chest. This did nothing to hide the singed material which, inexplicably, was also stained with green mud. Hammond looked worse – still laying in the leaf litter clutching a bag of crisps while Jeremy, the only pristine member of the trio, tried not to enjoy himself too much for fear of being hit.

“No, really – I want to see if you can surmise our unfortunate – well, _your_ unfortunate afternoon before this thing runs out of battery.”

“I'd be more comfortable if you weren't the one filming...” James added. “But, seeing as we have absolutely no sodding clue where the production crew is I guess your aging shaky-cam will have to suffice.”

“Stop being so British and get on with it.”

“Fine. Viewers...” James addressed the lens with a grimace of disdain, “...what you find here is a warning. If, for instance, you're considering driving along an ominously perfect track in the middle of the jungle – _don't_. Inevitably it will lead to a mine.”

Clarkson panned the camera around so that the audience could see the scale of their mistake. They were, at present, sitting in the bowl of an open cut mine (dirt – as far as they could tell because that's all they could find) with a straight line of destruction beginning at the lip of the mine continuing through several tiers where the Range Rover had rolled over and over until landing, roof first, in the mud at the bottom.

“Our problem, you see,” Clarkson continued, “is flipping the car back onto its wheels before Andy arrives to kill us all.”

“Jezza...”

“What?”

“Tell them why you're the only one not covered in shit.”

“Oh yeah...” Jeremy handed May the camera so that he could properly elaborate with both hands free, flapping about in his usual demented-flamingo-routine. “So... after the Rangey finished crashing – and we were all an upside down tangle of limbs – Hammond opened his door. He _immediately_ fell out, dragging an unhappy spaniel with him but because I'm nine feet tall and fat – I remained safely in the car!” He practically squealed in delight at this victory.

“It's not exactly a badge of honour, is it?” May grumbled, trying to ignore the feeling of mud caking across his skin in a shell-like manner.

“If you could smell yourself, James – you'd agree that this spot-free shirt is a wonderful victory. Oh god... Have you even seen anything more ridicules in your life than that...” Clarkson pointed to Hammond, who had found himself a small branch which was now wedged between the roof and the dirt. He was using it as a lever to try and shift the Range Rover. “He looks like an ant trying to move the sun. Should we give him a hand?”

“Why?” Asked May, still leaning against the car. He could feel Hammond's pitiful attempts through the metal. “Even if we were all ten years younger we wouldn't be able to move this. It's several tonnes of metal animal and we killed it. Face facts, Jeremy – we're not going anywhere without Andy's help.”

“I don't like it when you call me, 'Jeremy',” said Jeremy.

“That is your name.”

“Perhaps but when you use it I immediately assume the worst. Hamster!”

A very angry co-presenter appeared. “Can you two _please_ stop fawning over the camera and come and bloody help me dig this wreck out of the mud?!”

“Thought we might just leave it here,” Clarkson shrugged.

Hammond took a few measured paces back from the stricken four wheel drive so that he could truly appreciate the scene.

“Was there anything else useful in that chest?”

“You'll have to be more specific about the word, 'useful'.”

“...and the location of the chest,” May added, pointing to the open boot and trail of possessions down the side of the mine.

MANY MANY MONTHS AGO

“Is this the diesel?” James couldn't think of anything else to say. Nether could Jeremy, it seemed, as he nodded and started the engine.

The rain on all seven glass panels distracted James. Another perfect day in Britain. Pouring, as befitted such a Northern hunk of rock floating about in the middle of nowhere. The weather was no good for all the boutique vineyards dotted around the countryside nearby. Strictly speaking, Englishmen had no business growing grapes – it was all a bit comical and yet, that summed up their brethren quite nicely. Daft. Determined. Demented – if your name started with 'Jeremy' and ended in 'Clarkson'.

Every _single_ bone in May's spine raged after a night spent on the heather in a tent that leaked dew. It was probably cold as well but they'd consumed so much wine that he was practically invulnerable. Of course, this all meant that none of them could remember whose idea it had been to organise a wine tour but someone had and now they were packed into Jeremy's car like herrings.

“There are no paps out here,” Jeremy explained. “Lazy gits. Most of them are of a generation that don't believe in cars.”

“That makes them awfully easy to avoid,” James added. “All we have to do is steer clear of the push bikes with cameras resting in their baskets.”

Jeremy was struck by mellow laughter. It rumbled in him just like the Range Rover's engine. “I'll steer for them, is what I'll do...” he added, only slightly serious. James' irony was not lost on him. It was common knowledge that Jeremy preferenced his own bike above four wheels when he was milling about town. 'Traffic reasons' he'd say to any that questioned it. “Richard... you alive?”

“Mmm...” Came a slightly worrying grunt.

“Don't worry, once the sunlight hits his face he'll evaporate in a cloud of dust. Vampire...” May added. “Did you know we've booked _twelve_ wineries for today? I'm not sure that's possible – or legal. One of us is going to die.”

“May, the only one of us three poncy enough to book a day of wine-poncery is _you_.”

“Stop saying 'ponce' or I'll find that whistle I used to use on Oz.”

Jeremy found that obscenely hilarious.

“...what...?” James growled, to which he as offered no explanation. “No, come on, _what_?”

Jeremy knew better than to share so he instead feigned directional confusion and unwisely allowed May to navigate. He was, it was fair to state, the _worst satnav ever to grace an auto-mobile._

“Just – just – _stop arguing with yourself for a minute and tell me which way to go!_ ” Jeremy ended up shouting over his shoulder. Richard was ignoring them both – his jacket wrapped around his head doubling as a cushion and noise cancelling headphones.

“If you'd just quit shouting for a bit I'd tell you!”

“I'm not shouting!” Shouted Jeremy. “You're shouting!”

“ _That_ was the turn off!”

“What turn off. Where?”

“Back there, you muppet.”

“I don't see a turn off...”

“The one with the ruddy great sign on it that said, 'WINERY'!”

“There wasn't a sign!”

“There was!”

“Wasn't.”

“Was!”

“Wasn't!”

This went on for some time before Jeremy admitted defeat and quietly performed a U-turn and headed back until he came across a sign to the winery. Silence lingered in the car as the road turned to gravel, shaking Hammond back into the world of the living. Richard's snores tapered off and soon he was staring bleary-eyed at the overhanging pines. His sunglass were askew, almost entirely off his nose as he stretched out. “Are we there yet?”

They quickly learned that 'winery' translated to 'barn shed'. Any semblance of prestige began and ended at the gates.

“Oh no... You know I don't do 'rustic'...” Jeremy complained, as he saw rust quite literally flaking off the ironwork. “I'm going to catch some kind of hipster plague from this experience.”

“Quit talking rubbish, Clarkson,” James insisted, stumbling out of the car when they arrived. Perhaps his head wasn't quite sobered up yet. Still – wine would help. Sort of. “Lovely bit of fresh air. Smell that? Nettles. Cut grass. Apples not quite ripe.”

“James.”

“What?”

“There are no cameras. Oz Clarke isn't here and no one gives a sideways sod about the three particles of manure in the telore. Christ – is that a giant rooster?” The owners of the boutique winery had an oversized replica of the bird plastered over the door which was meant to be a humours nod to farm life but materialised as a prop from a horror film.

And that's how the three of them began their day – mulling about sheds, falling over in paddocks – generally letting the fresh air replace the smoke from the previous evening. This was about _them_. About reaffirming their friendship outside the bounds of the BBC. Proving, to themselves if no one else, that they existed without The Show. A dark part inside each one of them had been afraid that might not be the case.

“God – what are those?” James tilted his head at the slightly drooping offering from Jeremy. Richard was beside him and it was clear Clarkson's gift was intended for both of them. “Jeremy?”

“Yes, James?”

“What are those?” He repeated.

“Flowers.”

“Sod off, Clarkson!”

Richard reached forward, taking them from Clarkson – if only to confirm that they were, indeed, flowers. “Where did you nick these from then?”

Jeremy shrugged. “Garden.”

Actually, that was probably true, Richard realised. There was a bit of a garden bed beside their current wine-shack that looked as if a small goat had a go at it. Richard eyed Clarkson's muddied fingers wordlessly. He wasn't entirely sure what the gesture was about but he had a feeling it was to do with every single thing that had happened since – well just _since_. “Thanks mate...” he settled on, nudging James sharply until he agreed with a nod.

Clarkson returned the nod and wandered back over to the table where another trio of glasses was lined up in the shade. Richard and James exchanged concerned looks.

“Are we sure he's all right?” Richard asked.

May shrugged. “It's not the first time he's given one of us flowers.”

“True. First time he's stolen them though.”

“You're right. We probably shouldn't hang about too long in case someone notices.”

 


End file.
